


Invasion of the Zombie Snatcher

by Foxeh



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Female Protagonist, Gen, Magic, Urban Fantasy, Vampires, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-20 08:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15530385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxeh/pseuds/Foxeh
Summary: Elaine "Doc" Greene is a necromancer just trying to get by in Austin, Texas, when suddenly everything seems to start going wrong.  A "five-headed zombie dog" is attacking children, stray vampires are killing homeless folk, and worst of all, the local necromancers' familiars are starting to go missing.  When Doc's own familiar, Johann, disappears, it's up to Doc to figure out just what the hell is going on deep in the heart of Texas.





	1. The Dog

**Author's Note:**

> This is an "alpha" level work, being posted for reader commentary. I fully intend on publishing the final form of this, so if it disappears from AO3, that's because I'm trying to get it published. :) Please leave a review with your thoughts and comments!

The dog didn’t have five heads. It had six. At least. The body was an ugly patchwork of flesh. The legs were different lengths and different colors. Most of the heads were bunched up at the front. Or what she figured was the front, since that’s where most of the heads were. There was another head in the middle of the left side and the final sprouted out of the dog’s back near the rear.

The lone streetlight provided just enough light to see the slight turn of Johann’s head. “It really does have five heads, boss.” He had the voice of an old woman who’d started smoking at two-and-a-half. He also sort of looked like one, all leathery wrinkles and pale, thin hair.

“Nah,” she said. “It’s got six. At least.”  
“I see that. I think it’s a flesh golem.”  
Doc took a few steps closer to the dog. “You sure? I didn’t think anyone knew how to make one of those anymore.”  
“What else would you call a monster made from stitched-together dogs?”  
She smirked to herself in the dark. “Giovanni.”  
“Sometimes I feel like you’re my own personal albatross.”  
“You’ve been reading that sailor story again, haven’t you?”  
“It’s call the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Learn to read.”  
“I can read, dammit. I dropped out of high school, not kindergarten.”  
“Books, boss, not the comments people leave on pornographic videos.”

Sometimes the best way to deal with Johann was just to ignore him. Of course, the problem was that sometimes he counted that as a win. Johann’s smug silence said that this was one of those times.

She choked up on the spear and nicked an arm, feeling out for the dog-golem-thing. Ghouls, revenants, and vampires were all different beasts. Ghouls would suck in your power, while gaining control of a revenant was like wading through chest deep water. Vampires were like grabbing something in the middle of a clump of prickly pear, a constant battle that didn’t let up and hurt you more than it hurt them.  This was...different. Each dog was separate. She could grab one, but the moment she tried for a second she’d lose the first.

“I can’t get control, Johnny. It’s like I can only hold one dog at a time.”  
“Because they’re revenants, boss, not ghouls.”

Oh. She’d never tried to take control of more than one revenant. Hell, outside of Johann and Susie, she rarely saw more than one in the same damned place.

The dog took a few more steps toward them, placing itself fully into the streetlight. She could make out the individual bits of the dogs now, cut to pieces and rearranged like a puzzle made of flesh and bone. The left side head and a good chunk of the dog’s butt was white and fluffy and…

“Hey, ain’t that used to be the neighbor’s dog?”  
Johann turned to face her. “‘Ain’t that…’ You know, I spent five years learning how to speak English properly--”  
She ignored him. “Yeah, that’s the neighbor’s dog. It’s got that heart spot on it’s ass.”  
“--hard it is to learn a new language when you’re dead?”  
“Neighbor kid loved that dog.”  
“It’s like you just take some words, put them in a bucket--”  
“Always wondered what happened to it.”  
“--and they just spill out of your mouth. It’s an abomination.”  
“I dunno, I think it’s kinda cute,” she said. It was, in some weird, awful way. Or maybe that’s just because she was a broken, disgusting human being like that. The littlest head with the ears that flopped down at the tips was her favorite.  
“I wasn’t talking about the dog.”  
She turned her attention back to Johann. “What?”  
“Can I go home?”  
She shoved him. Not very hard. “Fuck no, we have work to do.”  
“Then do it.”

So she couldn't command the dog. That wasn't too much of a problem. It wasn't like Schroeder was going to be okay with her taking it home. No, she had a very specific fate in mind for the dog-golem-thing.  Doc had been across the street helping Tomas pull an engine when Schroeder called. She didn't work on cars herself, but Tomas needed an extra pair of hands, she owed him a few favors and there was always beer involved in these sorts of things. And Susie was watching Grease for the third time in a week and the fewer times she had to subject herself to "Beauty School Dropout" the better. 

Johann had brought the phone out, probably as sick of the musical as she. "It's Schroeder, boss."

If Schroeder had a first name, she'd never heard it. She was sure Schroeder had a title as well, since the cops were big on that sort of thing, but no one ever referred to her by that, either. As best as Doc could make it, she was in charge of the Magical Crimes Unit. What that meant in the grand scheme of things didn't interest her in the slightest.

"I thought you didn't need me anymore, Schroeder?"  
Schroeder snorted. "New guy's got a family emergency to take care of."  
"What, did he raise grandpa by accident?"  
"No. Familiar went missing."  
"Gotta be one hell of a character if his own damned rev runs away."  
"Don't matter. Just call me if you find a stray revenant wandering 'round. Someone called in a--" She sighed. "--a 'five-headed dog.' Attacked a kid. Put him in the hospital. One of the boys divined it and said it was dead, so now it's your problem."  
"A dead five-headed dog? Is there acid involved?"  
"Maybe. Supposedly it's threatening some employees at the HEB on Mopac and Parmer. Kill it and figure out where the fuck it came from so this don't happen again."  
Doc's eyes narrowed. "It's attacking an HEB? Why the fuck didn't you say that earlier?"  
Schroeder said nothing.  
She gestured at Johann. "Wake up the leech and load up." She turned to Tomas. "Estas bueno? Tengo que ir."  
"Si, ve, ve." He waved her away.

So the dog-thing had to die. It was just sitting there, not threatening anyone, although the HEB employees had been plenty frightened of it. It was shit, but life was like a box of chocolates: sometimes other people ate them all and you got nothing.

She reached out again, power curling over the ugliest of the six heads. Slowly, she took command of it. The other heads growled. With a flick of her wrist, she pulled the animating force from it. Or tried to. It pulled away, but snapped back like a rubber band. What the fuck?

"Uh, Johnny? Deanimating it isn't working. Any ideas?"  
"Not a thing, boss. It's all you."

That left the hard way. Where to hit it, though? Did it only have one heart? Did it have a central head?

The major drawback of a spear was that it's not a weapon meant to pierce bone. Spears kill by destroying organs or causing massive bleeding. On the undead, that meant hitting the heart. A gun would do just as well, with the added bonus of greater range and less strength needed to wield it. But they were noisy and tended to disturb the neighbors. Spears were quiet and if you missed they didn't blow straight into the apartment next door. She had a concealed carry permit and a pretty little 9mm, but it was for emergencies only. The spear was her main weapon.

Snarls erupted from the golem's heads as she crept into range. She should've put on the damned armor. It was hotter than the devil's balls, even with the sun down, but even still, Schroeder had said the thing ripped up a kid.  Live fast, die pretty. She stabbed the dog through the thickest part of the body, where she thought the heart, or a heart, would be.  The heads yelped, but didn't drop. She'd missed. Or maybe she'd hit a heart, but there was another. It didn't matter. Anything less than a killing blow was a miss.

And now it was pissed.

The dog-thing lunged for her. The spear was still stuck in it's side, so she used it to keep the business end of the dog angled away. The spear sank in further. One of these days she'd get a spear with wings.  She tried to pull the spear out, but the distraction was a mistake. The dog wrenched its body in a near ninety-degree angle and she felt teeth graze her arm. She staggered backward and landed on her ass.

Johann jumped in front of her, prodding the dog-golem's heads with his own spear. The dog was having none of it, and he was forced backward. She scrambled to her feet. He was good, but revenants had all the strength of a particularly vicious bit of bread.

"Trade, Johnny!"

Before he could pass the spear, car tires squealed in the distance and the dog's heads whipped around. He took a shot, sticking the spear in a patch of smooth read fur.  The dog's heads shrieked like a pack of five-year-olds in a candy store.  
Johann struck again, but overreached. Doc tried to grab him, but only managed a handful of fabric. He lurched, then slammed to the ground on hands and knees. A sharp crack rang out. The cute head, the one with the half-flopped hears, sank it's teeth into his shoulder and shook him like a cocktail.

  
She charged forward, pulled out her knife and stabbed the damned thing in the back. The knife stuck. Fuck it. She kicked it instead, catching the neighbor dog in the face.  It dropped Johann and skittered backward before dashing back in and catching her in the leg ripping through her jeans. There was blood, but she was still standing. Her armor wouldn't have protected her there, anyway.

They needed breathing room. Distantly, she could feel...something. She didn't have time to be picky. She raised it and called it to them.

It was a squirrel. Not even a campus squirrel either. She'd heard those could take on cars. So much for fighting, although...

She sent it darting in front of the dog and down the street. For a brief moment, the golem's heads were conflicted, but the chase won out. It ran down the street in a staggering lope.

Her leg wasn't bad. She'd need stitches, but it wasn't worth going to the doctor over.  Johann was on the ground, fingers in his shoulder.

"Let me see," she said.  
It was bad. His skin, long ago turned to leather, was split and torn. The muscles and tendons were ripped, the bone exposed. His humerus was cracked and dislocated.  
"Knee's out, too, boss." Good thing he was light enough to carry.  
They sat together a moment, Doc panting in the heat.  
"That could've gone better," he said.  
"Time for Plan B."  
"What's Plan B?"  
"Fuck if I know."

She'd left her old Astrovan at the HEB. Once Johann was settled in, she started it and took off back toward the dog. Or where she thought the dog had gone, anyway.  They turned onto Parmer. Down one street, turn.  The dog felt like a mental itch she couldn't scratch. She took the next right, and then a left that that put them on a dead-end that was as dark as her soul.

  
It was stuck. Fences and houses penned it in on all sides except the one now guarded by the van. It slunk behind the striped barriers that warned of the road's end.  She didn't feel sorry for it. She'd stopped feeling sorry for it the moment the bastard's teeth sunk into Johann's shoulder. Now she wished it would just die.

  
A few of the neighbors were standing in their yards, staring at the dog-thing. Either an audience or collateral damage. Great. One of them had a dog, a real live one, going batshit on the end of a leash.

  
The spears were useless. One of the knives was stuck in it's back, and the other wasn't going to do any more good. Shooting a gun into a dead-end formed by three houses was an idea so dumb only the governor would consider it. She rapped her knuckles on the steering wheel and considered her last option.

  
"You look constipated. What're you thinking, boss?" Johann stared at her over his ruined shoulder.  
She snorted. "And you look like you've lost a fight with a weed-whacker. I'm thinking of setting the leech on it."  
"Oh, good, maybe we'll get lucky and they'll kill each other."  
"He can hear you."  
"What's he going to do? Drink my blood? Enthrall me? I wish him luck."

  
She hopped out of the van. A few more neighbors had shown up, and some dumb kid with one of those smart phones was trying to take a picture of it. If he wasn't careful, he'd end up like the other. Whatever. Not her monkey, not her circus.  
Inside the back of the van, nestled amongst the empty Whataburger bags and the armor she really should've worn was a long, narrow box with a padlock on either end. She unlocked both.

  
What crawled out of the box wasn't a man anymore, although he certainly looked the part. He had deep brown skin and a mop of curly black hair. His pupils were far too big, the only clue a normal person would get if they weren't already charmed beyond good sense.

  
She handed him a spear. "There's a dog-golem hiding behind the barrier. I think my knife's still in it's back. Kill it."  
"As you wish, mistress."  
Did he just? "Do me a favor, Cutter?"  
"Yes, mistress?"  
"Don't ever use that phrase."  
"As you..." He smirked when she scowled at him, then gave a tiny bow. "Of course, mistress."  
"You can lay off the mistress crap, too."  
"Yes, mistress."

  
A pity she'd already handed him the spear. She could've stabbed him with it. Instead, she handed him the body armor Scorpion had bought for him years ago. He slipped it on over the cream turtleneck he wore. Now, instead of looking like an ambiguously brown Carl Sagan, he looked like a militarized ambiguously brown Carl Sagan.

  
He stepped out of the van and the neighbors got nervous. She didn't blame them. Anyone crazy enough to wear a turtleneck in the middle of an Austin summer deserved to be kept at better than arm's length.

  
The dog slunk backward until it disappeared into the shadows made by a fence. Cutter's easy stride never broke even as he passed the barrier. The multi-voiced snarling began again.

  
She couldn't see the fight. Cutter's broad back obscured what wasn't already in shadow. An eerie yelping began from the heads. One by one, the voices stopped.

  
Cutter turned and walked back to the van, dragging the dead dog-golem behind him. Blood spattered his turtleneck and one sleeve was torn. The neighbors murmured as he carefully laid the corpse at her feet and handed her first the knife, then the spear. There was a strange, ritualistic formality to it.

  
"I have done as you asked, mistress."  
She nodded. "Yep. Load back up."

  
He stripped the armor off and crawled back into the daybox, dropping the lid closed behind him.

  
She examined the dog-golem's corpse. He'd driven the knife into each and every head. Well, that answered the question of how you kill it. Too bad it didn't answer the question of where it came from or what it was doing running around north Austin at nearly midnight on a Monday.

Gentrification hadn't touched her area, but it would come eventually. Her house was in a neighborhood considered ugly by the standards of people who set property values, which was fine by her. It was the place where the taco trucks came home to roost for the night and the neighbor kid practiced his accordion in the backyard behind her. It was noisy and the cops showed up a lot, but no one fucked with her house, so all of that didn't really matter.

  
When she got gentrified out, she'd sell and buy something in Bastrop. Or maybe Killeen. Something definitely not on 35. Maybe she'd have enough money for a proper workshop.  
Her former mentor, Master Scorpion, had outfitted the house to a necromancer's taste. In addition to the office/library, he'd put a small shed in the backyard, built an attached garage, and turned the master suite into a vampire den.  
She was a little pissed about that last bit, but it was hard to stay mad at a dead guy when he'd left you almost everything he'd owned, even if she had a hard time making the mortgage.

  
A dead possum lay in the driveway. Probably someone's idea of a joke, unless by some weird coincidence it had gotten hit and just happened to have crawled there. A brief burst of power animated it, and she sent the ghoul limping off toward her neighbor's backyard, where it was quickly swallowed by the unmowed lawn.

  
Johann looked over at her. "Really, boss?"  
"Don't worry, it'll rot and deanimate long before they bother to mow."  
"Like you're one to talk."  
"They should be glad human corpses are hard to come by, otherwise they'd wake up in the morning to find some dead guy staring in their bedroom window with his dick out."  
He was fighting a grin and losing. "You're going to hell, boss."  
"Good, the party's better over there, anyway. Here's hoping they move away and we get someone who actually mows next time."

The door leading from the garage to the house opened by itself as she helped Johann limp into the house. "Que onda, Scorpion?" He was dead, but not yet gone.  
Inside, Susie had drug the laptop into the kitchen and was already typing up an invoice for Schroeder. She liked feeling productive and it gave her something to do besides watch Grease again. Younger than Johann, she had a better grasp of technology, despite having a worse memory.

"Bill 'em two hours each for me and Johann."  
"Johann and I."  
"You didn't go, it was me and Johann."  
She laughed. Didn't take much.  
Johann scowled. "How is it that you charge for my time, but I never get a paycheck?"  
"You can have one as soon as you start covering your half of the mortgage."  
"Well I'll just go sleep outside, then."  
"I'll sell you a cardboard box for a dollar."  
"With a ghoul in it, no doubt. I'll pass, thanks."

She left him in the kitchen and went out to the shed, one of those metal and lumber jobs. She'd had to caulk the roof after the last good storm but eventually the damn thing would just have to be replaced. If she had the money, she'd hire a contractor to build an addition to the house instead, but--heh--she'd never have that much money.

  
The shed was cramped, one wall nothing but shelving, and a second with a single narrow table. A hospital gurney sat in the middle, with only the narrowest of spaces around it. She hauled it out into the yard and left it. Now with room to maneuver, she grabbed a shallow plastic bin and chose her tools. Hemostats, forceps, scalpels, fresh blades, needles, her favorite "Ceiling Fan" thread, the double-boiler.

  
Between the dog attack and getting home, Johann's humerus had already begun to heal. The tears in his muscle were a simple stitch job, but the skin was shot. It was paper thin in places and too damaged to take thread. She cut the worst of it away.

  
"You want to wait for the crack to fuse back before I pop your arm back in, or would you rather I do it now?"  
"Let's wait. I don't want to do this twice."  
"Sounds good."

  
His patella on the other, well, leg, was broken clean in two and too displaced to fuse back correctly. She pulled the glue out of the freezer and got the double-boiler started.  
While that was on, she slipped into what used to be a dining room, or maybe a third bedroom, but was now part office and part library. The extra skin was stashed in a Rubbermaid box partially filled with those little "DO NOT EAT" packets you found in shoeboxes. Johann's body would assimilate the skin and make it his own after a while, but she still tried to choose a piece that was close to his normal color.

  
New skin sewed so nice. It was hard to tell that Johann was a crummy patchwork of other bodies, but hey, she'd heard you replace all your own cells every seven years or something, so whatever. The magic didn't seem to care, even at his age.  
She didn't sew it on all the way. His humerus should finish fusing overnight, but it would be nice to double-check before she went about shoving and yanking on his arm.

  
The shoulder done for now, she turned back to the knee. Susie held the double-boiler close as Doc carefully brushed it onto one side of the patella before carefully lining up the broken pieces and holding them fast. She didn't sew that up, either, for the same reason as his shoulder.

  
Johann done, the dog-golem was next. She hauled it out of the van, through the backyard, and into the shed. Getting it onto the gurney would be next to impossible without Cutter's help, so she just left it on the floor.

  
Susie helped Johann to the shed, which was almost cute, if they'd been an actual old couple instead of a pair of mummified corpses. He sat down on a stool that lived under the narrow table.

  
"Hey, Suze? Could you put Cutter away? I left him in the daybox.."  
"Oh, you betcha!" She toddled out of the shed and toward the garage.  
"Good to know you weren't going to leave him in the van all night."  
She shrugged and slit the dog-golem open. "He practically lives in the damned box, anyway, so it's not like putting him in the bedroom's much different."  
"You didn't lock the box back and he doesn't have any books in the van, that's what's different."  
"Oh."

  
There were, in fact, six of everything in the dog's body cavity. She dug out handfuls of dried organs, sifting through them carefully. Bits of paper fluttered here and there among the livers and intestines.

  
Johann picked one up and examined it. "Ball point pen on machined paper. That rules out someone having inherited this beast."  
"We knew that already. That one head belongs to the old neighbor dog, remeber?"  
He sighed. "Consider it confirmation. The penmanship looks the same on all of these."  
"There are words?" She looked up at him, her hands still buried in dog.  
"No. See the way this sigil is drawn? With the flourish? The same person did all of these."  
He was right. Whoever had raised the dogs had drawn the same sigil the same way.  
She tapped a finger on a bit of spine. "They had to've mummified them first, otherwise this stitching wouldn't be so tight. But did they raise the dogs first, or create the golem first?"  
Johann shrugged. "No idea, boss. You don't have a golem spell in the library?"  
"If we do, I haven't run across it." She frowned and stared back into the dog-golem. A bit of plastic peeked out of an esophagus. She tugged it out and stared at it.  
"And whoever they were, they used plastic baggies for the herbs. Clearly this was not a twee artisan hipster job."  
Johann chuckled. "So that rules out most of Austin, then."  
"Definitely." She examined the herbs. "Don't recognize these. Keep going over the sigils. It's probably Hermetic all the way down, but maybe they snuck something interesting in there."

  
Despite being sniffed, touched, lit on fire and soaked in water, the herbs did not let go of their secret. She set it aside.  
Johann was still sifting through the papers with his good arm. "Definitely Hermetic school, but I'm pretty sure they're Paper branch, boss. Some of these are a little too threatening for straight Hermetic."

  
Interesting. Had someone tried to make a guard dog? Seemed to her you didn't need to add much to this beast to make it scary.

  
The rear of the dog held more bits of paper, none of them of interest, and more baggies of herbs. She was half expecting to find someone's weed stash, but no such luck. She sorted them by type. Most were the usual stuff, pearly everlasting, sage, black pepper, cypress, blah, blah, blah. There were precisely six baggies of the oddball. She double-checked them all.

  
"Find something?"  
"Just six bags of an herb I don't know. I'll run by Pellar's tomorrow and see if they know what it is. It's probably too much to ask that it's something unique that one person special-ordered a month ago, but it can't hurt to ask. I need to get that money to them, anyway."  
He reached inside the dog for another piece of paper. "Hey, what's this?"  
It was one of those little American flags you'd see handed out around the fourth of July, minus the stick. Her brow furrowed.  
"Huh. You got me. Why the hell would someone jam a flag into a golem?"  
Johann snorted. "Why not? I'm honestly surprised you haven't shoved a Texas flag into me."  
She laughed. "Well, that tells us our necro ain't Texan."  
He held it up by a corner and stared at it as if it had insulted him. "Too bad that's all it tells us. Maybe Pellar will have more information."  
"I hope the herbs are something at least. I'm just now about to pay their ass back, I don't have the money for a divination, too."


	2. Gloria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So AO3 formats this stuff terribly when I do a copy/paste. Unfortunately, I'm a bit busy doing the second draft so I'm not going to fix it. It's also available at WattPad if the bad formatting bothers you that much.

Doc’s Dead-Shit-O-Meter was going off. She pulled off 35 and into a shopping center.   
“Boss?” Johann asked.  
She held up a hand. They’d passed it, of course, whatever it was.   
Johann was looking at her, still waiting for an answer. One of his eyes had a chip in it. Damn. Those things were expensive.   
“Something’s nearby.”  
He raised an eyebrow. “Vampire?”  
She paused. “Nah. Hard to tell from this distance, but it’d be a stupid vampire to camp this close to 35.”  
“Ghoul, then.” He sighed and turned back to the window.   
Doc coaxed the van into gear. “Well, it ain’t you.”  
Traffic on the feeder road was a mess, but that was 35 for you. Getting into the U-turn lane required a Houston level of aggression.   
“Town’s gettin’ crowded,” she muttered.  
“If you move back out into the sticks with the rednecks, I’m not going. There’s a nice necromancer in Perth who plays the cello and is willing to pay airfare.”  
“I thought you hated the cello.”  
“I hate banjos more.”  
She stifled a laugh.   
They passed it again, but now she was starting to narrow down the location. She slowed down and took a right. It felt like this was the right side of the highway. Another block, then another right turn. Again, they passed it. It was somewhere near the gas station. She pulled in and cut the engine.   
“Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.”  
Johann blinked at her. “This isn’t a Circle K, boss.” He paused, then narrowed his eyes. “Have you been drinking Monsters again?”  
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry about it, Johnny.”  
The guy behind the counter acted as if he’d never seen a revenant before. Maybe he hadn’t. Didn’t help that Johann dressed like a high school chemistry teacher on Casual Friday. A mummified high school chemistry teacher on Casual Friday.   
She wasn’t much better. Too-pale skin, scarred arms, and a pair of jeans that were in dire need of becoming shorts. Together they looked like the squarest of white dad zombies being drug around by his redneck lesbian daughter.  
She swung by the cooler.  
“You have been drinking Monsters again.”  
“You never let me have any fun.”  
“You’re going to kill yourself.”  
“Well, the sooner I die, the sooner you can fly off to Perth and enjoy cello music and kangaroos.” She paid for the drink. The cashier’s eyes never left Johann. “Perth is in Australia, right?”  
Johann was already out the door.   
She jogged after him, trying to open the drink without spilling it. The feeling got stronger as they circled the building. “Our dead thing is a revenant.”  
Johann stopped.   
Doc scowled at him. “Don’t have a heart attack.”  
He scowled back, but held her drink as she peered into the dumpster.   
“Jesus!” She stumbled backward, nearly knocking her drink out of Johann’s hand.  
“You found them?”  
“I found somebody.”  
They were revenants. Both of them. One of them, at least, was dead. Dead-dead. Knife-buried-in-face-dead. Someone had really hated this guy. “Who seriously puts dead bodies in the dumpster anymore?”  
“They’re dead?”  
“The one is.” She climbed into the dumpster, ending up knee-deep in trash. Good thing these jeans were on their way out, anyhow, although she was sure Pellar was going to love it. She man-handled the poor fuck onto the edge. He slipped out of her grasp and landed on the ground with a thump.   
“Boss!”  
“That was an accident.”  
Johann met eyes and started to tip the energy drink to the side.  
“I swear to god, it was an accident.”  
“Fine.”  
She turned her attention to the second revenant. This one was female, but she didn’t seem to be dead. She didn’t seem to be moving, either. The letters “CT” were tattooed on her forehead.   
“Hey,” she said softly. “You alive in there?”  
Her eyes opened. They were glass, and eerily similar to Johann’s, a warm amber-brown. The same model, maybe.   
“You okay?”  
She opened her mouth. Her tongue was missing. Well, that was…an answer.  
Johann’s head appeared over the side of the dumpster. “Are they okay?”  
Doc heaved the revenant woman up and managed to get her over the side without dropping her. “Stay with her, Johnny, I’ll get the truck.”  
She dialed Schroeder while she started the van. Schroeder picked up on the second try of the engine.  
“Schroeder,” she said flatly.  
“Hey, remember when you told me to keep an eye out for stray revenants?”  
Schroeder’s voice suddenly perked up. “You found him?”  
“I found a him and a her. Take your pick.”  
“You found two? Where?”  
“Gas station on 35 and…” she craned her neck around. “Braker Lane. It’s not a Circle K.”  
“What?”  
“Bad joke, sorry.”   
“Let me grab Escobar. We’ll be there shortly.”  
“We’ll be here.”  
When she turned the corner to the back of the gas station, Johann was dragging their new friend along. “Her spine’s been severed,” he said.  
She turned to the revenant. “Who’d you piss off?”  
“Knock it off, boss.”  
A police car pulled in as they were trying to get her in the front seat of the van. Doc backed away from the vehicle and held up her hands.  
“So you weren’t the one that called the police?” Johann asked.  
“I called Schroeder, but I didn’t think she’d be here this quickly. Maybe the cashier did.”  
Johann put a blank face on and stared out into the distance. The other revenant slid down and buried her face in his shoulder. Doc was too far away to tell if that was on accident or on purpose. Either way, he’d be hating it.   
The cops looked much too young to be responding to a call about a woman dragging dead bodies out of a dumpster. One of them glanced at the van, his mouth moving as he read the magnetic sign. “The Zombie Doc – Removal, Restoration, Reinterment.”  
He nodded at the truck. “You the zombie doc?”  
Johann made a barely-audible and very zombie groan.   
“Yes sir, that’s me,” she said.   
“Someone call you about this?” He waved at the dead revenant, still crumpled on the ground.   
“No, sir, I found them just now. Schroeder and that new guy are on their way.”  
He grunted. “How’d you find them?”  
“I’m a necromancer, sir, we…just sort of know.”  
“They both zombies?”  
She wasn’t about to lecture a man with a gun about the finer points of revenants versus ghouls. “Yes, sir.”  
He walked over to the dead revenant and gave the corpse a kick. “Well, that’s that, then. Better leave it to the weirdos, then. You have a good day, now.”  
Johann sneered, but held his tongue until the cops drove away.   
She drug the other revenant to the van and propped him up beside a wheel. The letters “VA” were tattooed on his forehead. Weird.   
Schroeder and the new guy appeared almost a half-hour later. At this rate, Pellar would be wanting to close up shop by the time they got there.   
The new guy was a tubby Hispanic man who didn’t bother with introductions. He bolted toward the dead revenant, but shook his head as soon as he got close.  
“That’s not him.” He turned to her. “Where’s the other one?”  
“Front seat,” she said.  
He shook his head again. “That’s not him, either.”  
Schroeder sat in the car and talked to dispatch before getting out. She was in her forties, but Doc had learned the hard way which of them was faster in a foot race.   
“Well?” she said to the new guy.  
He continued to shake his head. “Neither of them are him.”  
She turned to Doc. “So who are they?”  
Doc shrugged. “No one I know, but she could be Clara and I just don’t know it.”  
“Clara?” the new guy asked.  
“Baker’s familiar.” Schroeder walked up to the van and nodded at Johann before turning her attention to their mute friend. “You Clara?”  
The revenant shook her head.  
“Well, in that case, I have no idea who the fuck they are,” Doc muttered.   
The new guy was inspecting the dead revenant’s clothing. “How many known revenants live in the Austin area?”  
Doc shrugged. “Four? Clara, Pod, Susie, and Johann. I think there’s another in Bourne, few more in San Antone.”   
“You’re sure neither of these could be Pod?”  
“I’ve been up to my elbows in Pod, I’m pretty damn sure, thanks.” Like she didn’t know her own damn patients.   
Schroeder cut in. “Let’s start over. Escobar, this is Elaine Greene, call her Doc, and her familiar Johann. Doc, this is Officer Joachin Escobar.”  
Doc accepted his limp handshake. Johann ignored him.   
From out of the patrol car, Escobar pulled a piece of paper. “This is my familiar, Stilts. He went missing last night at approximately twenty-one hundred hours during a walk outside.”  
The revenant in the photo had a full head of straight blonde hair and a hooked nose. He looked like a Beach Boy crossed with a large parrot. She wondered about the nickname, but social nicety prevented kept her from asking.   
“Can I keep this?”  
“Please. Let me know if you hear anything.”   
“Where did these two come from, Doc?” Schroeder was taking photos.   
She shrugged. “Found ‘em both in that dumpster over there. I was fixing to see Pellar about that dog-thing when I felt them.”  
“Anything new on the golem?”  
“No. I’ll let you know what Pellar says.”  
Schroeder scowled. “Escobar, load this one up. Autopsy him and let’s see what we find.” She gestured at the other revenant. “Doc, you take her and see what you can do. I’d like to interview her if at all possible. Things are too damn busy around. here for my liking.”  
“Don’t think I can do much. Tongues are hard to replace, although I could always give her Johann’s. Then at least I’d save the world from hearing him talk.”  
Johann looked pissed. The other revenant looked terrified. 

Wyrd Wytch Supply Co. was out by the Domain, sandwiched between a plasma donation center and an Indian supermarket. She’d once hoped for a little money on the side plassing, but she’d felt bad lying about never having fed a vampire directly and she’d passed out the day after her second donation. Johann made her promise to never do it again. The Indian grocery was pretty sweet, though.  
It was fifteen minutes after closing when they walked in, and Pellar was armed with a dirty look before they realized it was her. Today they were in full witch mode—gauzy shirt, long skirt, and bright silver jewelry that contrasted with their black skin. Their own familiar, a huge orange cat named Jonesy, was splayed out on a stack of books in the window. A sign above him read "NEW RELEASE! Magick for the Mechanic: How to Turbo Charge Basic Auto Repair."  
Doc handed Pellar a pair of twenties. “Thanks.”   
“You’re welcome. How’s business?”  
“Oh, god, don’t ask. APD’s got their very own necromancer, but it’s okay because, hey, if he takes an especially large dump then I get to cover for him when a six-headed dog-golem takes a bite out of some dumb kid. How’re you?”  
Pellar stared blankly. “Aside from just now finding out there was a six-headed monster roaming around town attacking kids, I'm fine. Good gods, please tell me it’s dead.”  
“Cutter took it out last night.” She dug around in her pocket and pulled out one of the baggies of herbs. “Found six of these in it. I have no idea what herb that is.”  
They examined it closely before opening it and taking a whiff. “Dulse. Mostly used to promote harmony. Don’t know what a necromancer would use it for.”  
She considered. “Maybe to unite the golem’s component revenants?”  
“Your guess is better than mine. Speaking of revenants, you hear anything about the one that went missing? Your new friend’s familiar went for a walk and disappeared.”  
“Yeah, we talked to him already. Found two revs this morning, but neither were him.”  
Pellar zipped the baggie shut with a sharp motion and then froze. “You just found two revenants? Like just wandering around?”  
“No, they were thrown into a dumpster. Someone tried to kill them.”   
They ticked fingers off as they spoke. “So we had a rampaging monster made of revenants, a familiar goes missing, and two more appear in a dumpster? Is it some sort of necromantic full moon or something? Did all ya'll go off your meds?”  
“She was never on meds in the first place,” Johann said.  
Pellar ignored him. “So where are they now?”  
"Escobar took the dead one for an autopsy. The animate one is in the van."  
"And you didn't bring her inside why?"  
"Because she's a paraplegic?"   
"And you came here."  
"Did you want your money or not? I might've gotten a flat tire on the way home and then you'd be waiting another three months."  
They sighed. "You can at least bring her inside instead of leaving her in the van like a dog."  
She threw up her hands. "Alright, alright."  
Johann was halfway to the van by the time she turned around, not that he was strong enough to carry her on his own. She jogged outside to find him giving their new friend a brief rundown on Pellar. Good idea.   
Pellar called out as she staggered in the door, "In the office! I'll lock up."   
Doc concentrated on keeping the revenant's legs from knocking over any of the merchandise. Johann had to dive for a candle she knocked over trying to turn the corner into the office.   
The office was where the magic happened. Literally. It was more of a workshop with a corner office crammed inside than a proper office. Pellar wasn't the best witch in Austin, but they were the most well-known, and they were always busy.   
She plopped their friend down into the office chair and arranged her to hopefully be more comfortable. Jonesy, newly awakened by the activity, hopped into her lap, much to her apparent delight.   
"Play nice, Jonesy," Doc told the cat. Not that Jonesy was anything but nice. She was partially convinced Pellar had magicked the damn thing somehow. He was the only cat she'd ever met that wasn't pissy about strangers and didn't mind living in a shop.   
Pellar poked their head into the office. "Could I ask a favor real quick?"  
"Sure," she said, following them to the far corner of the store.   
They glanced back at the office. "How bad is it? Can you fix her?"  
Doc shook her head. "I haven't gotten a good look at her, but I think someone put a knife in her spine. That's permanent. Provided she's got a necro feeding her, she'll stay animated for a few months or years, but that's the best she'll get. You don't fix that kind of broke."  
"So what are you going to do?"  
"Take her home, fix what I can, make her comfortable, and see what Schroeder finds out. She can stay with me if she wants, but she'd be better off with someone else. I'm feeding three undead, I don't need another."  
"How'd she end up in the dumpster? Did she say?"  
"Don't know. Someone cut out her tongue." She picked up a crystal pyramid. "What the hell do you do with one of these?"  
"Nothing," Pellar said, taking it from her and setting it back on the shelf. "It's for the tourists. Who tried to do her in? Her necro?"  
Doc shook her head. "No, a necro would've just deanimated them or bound her if they didn't want her talking. Much easier than knifing someone."  
They slumped against the wall and stared at the office. "She had to come from somewhere. Someone has to know something."  
"Yeah, well, I have a hard time believing it's coincidence that the new guy takes off from work the same night a dog-golem goes running all over town. Then the next day I find those two? Please. The worst thing I've had to deal with in ten years has been stray vampires and suddenly the town turns into a circus as soon as Joachin Escobar shows up."  
"What're you going to do about it?"  
She laughed. "Fucking nothing. APD wanted their own necro, they got one. He's their problem now."  
"And your problem is our lovely lady friend with no tongue." They chewed their lower lip for a moment, then straightened and snapped their fingers. "I have an idea."

"No. Homey don't play that."  
Pellar glared at her. "This is for her. You want to find out what to call her, or are you just going to settle for bad jokes about quadruple amputees?"  
"Fine, but if everything goes to hell, I'm blaming you."  
"The shop is insured."  
"I'm not, and if something happens to Johann I will kick your witchy ass."  
"Nothing's going to happen to anyone."  
Doc rolled up her sleeve, anyway. On her right shoulder was a tattoo of la virgencita, the Third Pentacle of Mars behind her, a rosary in her right hand and a bleeding cut across her left. Would it actually work? She didn't know, but it certainly couldn't hurt.   
Pellar unfolded a Oujia board and set it in front of their lady friend. It wasn't one of the fancy ones with the inlays and the carved wooden planchettes for sale in the front of the store. This one was cheap made worse by age and use.   
"Can you at least put her in the circle?"  
"No, I'm not putting her in the circle. She's fine. The planchette is over there, and I'm not going to ask anyone to come talk. It's just cardboard, Elaine."  
"Just cardboard my ass. Look at that thing, it's probably half-sentient."  
"Using them big words today."  
"Go to hell."  
Johann, ignoring them both, put a pen in the revenant's mouth. "Okay," he told her. "Take your time, and let us know what to call you."  
She stared hard at the board for a moment before slowly tapping out letters.  
GLO--  
She dropped the pen. Johann picked it up for her.  
\--RIA.  
"That's a pretty name," he said. "Is there anything you need or that I can get you?"  
She shook her head.   
Doc slunk forward, eying the board. "Does Escobar have anything to do with you being in that dumpster."  
Gloria shook her head again.   
"So much for that theory," Pellar said.  
"Doesn't mean he's not responsible for the dog."  
Johann raised an eyebrow, then turned back to Gloria. "Who did this to you?"  
She paused, then tapped out "DE."  
"'DE?' Is this something to do with your tattoo?"  
She nodded, the pen dropping to the floor again.  
"Is DE a revenant?"  
Another nod.   
Doc cut in again. "If we took you back to the gas station, could you take us to this DE person?"  
MAYBE.  
"Who is your necromancer?" Johann asked.  
SAMUEL CARSON.  
"Hey, hey, hey," Pellar said. "There's something!"  
"Do you know his phone number?"  
NO.  
"You can stay with us until you find him, is that alright?"  
YES.   
Johann turned to her. "Anything else, boss?"  
"Would you at least try to take us to DE?"  
Gloria nodded.  
"Would you be willing to talk to Schroeder?"  
Another nod.   
"Okay, that's that. Let's go see if we can find DE."

The original spell to create a revenant was designed to produce a long-lasting undead servant. That was a long time ago, and the original spell had been reformulated and warped far beyond the intent of the original creator. There were no less than seven main branches of revenant spells, each with their own sub-branches and styles. But one thing the mutations and reformulations couldn’t get rid of was the basic need of a revenant to serve. What happened was simply that the underlying idea of service was warped in different ways.  
Hermetic school revenants were more literal servants. The paper branch tended to be Hermetics with a stubborn streak. Johann was of the virtually extinct Neo-Egyptian school. He had enough autonomy to tell you to fuck off, but inevitably he seemed to do whatever was in his necromancer’s best interest. Most of the time he was the asshole who gave you the advice you didn’t want to hear. It didn’t help that he was nearly three hundred years old. Nothing was new to Johann except technology and movies he hadn’t seen in three months.   
In turn, necromancers fed their charges. A necro was a leaky faucet. If there was no revenant around to soak up the excess energy, they would accidentally raise ghouls. Putting down the occasional animated squirrel corpse was the sort of minor inconvenience that made dealing with Johann’s bullshit worthwhile.   
The end result, between the magic and the food, was that revenants almost never voluntarily left their necromancers. So what had happened to Stilts? How had Gloria been separated from her necro? Where the fuck had all the damned revenants come from?  
Doc couldn’t get the question out of her head, even as Johann tried his best to interpret Gloria’s pen jerks into useable directions.   
It was an apartment only a few blocks away from the gas station. More pen-jerks got them to a building, and Johann read off the unit numbers before Gloria nodded at the correct one, a ground floor unit on the corner. Her Dead-Shit-O-Meter was going off again. Clearly something was going on.   
She glanced at Johann. “Shall we?”  
He nodded and they walked up to the door. The unmistakable presence of things big and dead assaulted her brain. People.   
“There are dead guys inside, Johnny.”  
He backed away, shaking his head. “Just call Schroeder, boss. This is beyond us.”   
She swore and pulled out her phone.   
“You get her to talk?”  
“Hi, Schroeder, I’m just fine, thanks.”  
“If this is a social call, Greene, hang up.”  
“Fine, dammit. She doesn’t talk, but she can work a pen and a scary-ass Ouija board like a champ. She led us to an apartment full of dead people. Figured Escobar might want to start earning his keep.”  
It was Schroeder’s turn to swear. “Give me the address. Homicide's gonna love this.”

She and Johann were preparing to leave when Schroeder stopped her.   
“I want to talk to your friend, and I want you to give me your opinion of what’s going on in that apartment.”  
Doc snorted. “So what the fuck did you hire Escobar for?”  
“I didn’t hire him, and you’re here already."  
"So you don't trust him, either."  
Her brow furrowed. "I trust him just fine. But his specialty is spooks, and yours is zombies. I'd take it as a personal favor if you'd give me your opinion."   
"So why'd ya'll hire a necro if you're just going to have me come back after him?"  
"I said I didn't hire him. Where's that Ouija board?"  
"That was Pellar's. I don't own a goddamn Ouija board."  
Schroeder turned toward the cops milling around near the patrol cars. "Anderson! Get me a piece of paper and a marker!" When Doc didn't move, she turned back to her. "Get in that damned apartment, Greene."

The apartment had no furniture. Instead, a neat row of mummified bodies lay on the floor. She bent down to examine one.   
There wasn't much to see. It was clearly male, probably white. He had no hair on his face or head. His eyes were sad little raisins, and a hole in his side had been whip-stitched shut.   
The rest of them were similar, except that some where female and some weren't white. All of them were bald and clean-shaven. Even the pubic and armpit hair had been removed.   
In the kitchen, bags of playground sand and cheap rock salt sat on the counters. Clearly this was a budget operation.   
"Who mummifies people in an apartment? You'd think they'd rent a warehouse for this crap."  
Johann didn't reply, and she had to glance over her shoulder to make sure he was still there.   
Most of the CSI team were gathered around the bathroom. They slipped past them and into the apartment's single bedroom.   
Tables were lined up against the walls, each topped by a human-sized pile of salt and sand. She knew what she'd find underneath.   
"If they're raising revenants, they're not doing the ritual here," she said.   
"So we have two sites?" Johann asked.   
"At least."  
The CSI team had cleared out of the bathroom, so she popped in just for curiosity's sake. The air stank of shit and piss and body odor. A pile of ratty, stinking clothes were scattered on the floor.   
"No toilet paper," she muttered. "No one living has been staying here long."  
"Gloria said DE was a revenant."  
"Yep."  
Dried blood streaked the bathtub. Not much, but obviously enough to drive the CSI team into a frenzy. She backed out of the bathroom.  
As they left the apartment, Escobar was entering with a large backpack. She nodded stiffly, but didn't stop for conversation.   
Schroeder was waiting for her outside the apartment. "Well?"  
Doc shrugged. "Someone's mummifying corpses on the cheap but they're not raising them as revenants. At least not here."  
She nodded, then jerked her head to the van. "Walk you to your car."  
"You're such a gentleman."  
She ignored the remark. "Can you fix Gloria's tongue?"  
"I'd have to replace it. Tongues are tricky. I can make her one but I don't have the materials."  
"I see." They were nearly to the van before Schroeder stopped and glanced back to the rest of the cops. "Cutter's clean?"  
Doc stared at her hard for a moment. "Ye-es?"  
"You sure?"  
"Yes. Fucker's so clean I've got to take him out tonight. The dog got his arm and it hasn't healed."  
Schroeder nodded. "Good, because there was a suspected vampire kill in the bathtub. Keep him on the down-low. I'd hate to see either of you get tangled up in that mess."  
Well, fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave reviews, reactions, and criticism! This is a work-in-process, and there's lots of work to be done, still. 
> 
> Updates and silly things are at my Tumblr: foxehrobot.tumblr.com


	3. The Missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Doc tries to find out more about a possible stray vampire roaming Austin, Johann decides to do a little research of his own...

She didn’t have Baker’s number, but Marge was working late. Mopac was a nightmare, even at this hour. They were stuck behind a particularly ugly pickup truck. Her van wasn’t much better, but at least it stuck to one color and rust instead of three.   
Marge worked for a civil rights group that worked on behalf of necromancers. Doc didn’t particularly feel that they were doing a great job at it, but no one asked her opinion. Marge’s office was in one of those fancy buildings that backed up to some park or something so the employees could run or do yoga or whatever else affluent white people did during their lunch breaks.   
She was waiting for them at the front door, an iron-haired battle goddess in a pencil skirt. Her familiar, Pod, was nowhere to be seen. That was…odd. Doc could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen Marge without Pod.   
They were getting good at getting Gloria in and out of the damn van. Doc had considered leaving her and Johann, but you never knew who would suddenly freak out about seeing a couple of corpses just hanging out in a locked truck.   
Marge’s lips pursed as they approached. “Who’s this?”  
“Gloria. Long story.”   
She nodded and opened the front door. “Come inside, get out of the heat.”   
“Where’s Pod?”  
“At home. Between Benjamin and the wards, she’s safer there.” Benjamin was her ex-MMA fighter husband. Marge herself had been a professional women’s boxer.   
“Safer? Who the fuck would want to hurt Pod?”   
Marge eyed her as they went up the elevator. “Whoever’s been kidnapping familiars?” She sighed. “You haven’t been on the forums in months.”   
“Not really.” She’d been meaning to, but it hadn’t happened.  
“Well, people’s familiars are disappearing. Started on the coast, but now it’s been San Antonio and Austin, too. Have you met Joachin?”  
“Escobar? Yeah. Unfortunately.”  
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, his familiar’s missing now.”  
“Boss,” Johann said. “Susie’s at home…”  
“With Scorpion and Cutter. She’s fine. Safer than you two, probably.”   
He still looked uneasy. “How exactly is a poltergeist going to protect her?”  
Doc gave him a look. “If an angry dead Mexican dude started throwing knives at me, I’d have serious second thoughts about kidnapping his former familiar.”   
Photos of kids, dogs, Benjamin, and Pod decorated every surface of Marge’s office. At least one of the children must’ve followed in the family tradition, according to the photos. Another was an adorable, ancient photo of Marge as a young woman, riding a carousel horse with Pod. Doc stared at it. “You two’ve been together a while.”  
She smiled. “I met her when I was twelve. If she disappeared…” The smile faded as she cracked her knuckles.   
“I gotcha.”  
“So, what can I do for you?”  
“We’re looking for Samuel Carson. He’s Gloria’s necromancer.”  
Marge’s head whipped around to regard Gloria. “Of course. I thought I recognized you. You’re one of our missing familiars.”   
She pulled out, no shit, an actual Rolodex and flipped through it. “I have his number right here.” She wrote it down and handed it to Doc. “We’ll all be pleased to see someone finally reappear. What happened? How did you find her?”  
“In a dumpster with another revenant. He was dead. She has a hard time communicating, so still no idea how she got there or what happened. Schroeder’s on it, though. With that new guy.”  
“What’s your beef with him?”  
“You ever meet his familiar?”  
She shook her head. “I haven’t met Joachin except on the forums.”  
“Well, I got stuck doing his job for him because he was out looking for…Stilts?”  
“Stilts,” Johann agreed.  
“And then the next day I find Gloria and her friend. Something’s going on, and I don’t think him arriving in town just before the shit started hitting the fan is a coincidence.”   
Marge scowled. It was terrifying. “Do you have any actual proof?”  
“Not a damn bit.”  
Her face relaxed, and so did Doc. “Then coincidence is always a possibility.” She consulted her phone. “There’s a meeting on…Thursday, in San Antonio. I’m trying to get as many of us as possible together to discuss what’s happening. I’d appreciate it if you’d join us.”  
“Sure thing. And hey, Schroeder thinks we’ve got a stray vamp in town. Keep an eye out?”  
“Hmm. I haven’t seen any sign, but if I do you or Schroeder will be the first to know.”  
“Thanks, Marge. Tell Pod that Susie says hi.”  
She laughed. “Tell Susie that Pod says hi. When this all blows over we should take them out to Zilker Park again.”

Johann watched the world go by with little interest. Doc’s neighborhood was on the wrong side of town. It was out of necessity, of course. The house had been Master Scorpion’s, and he had chosen a house near his brothers, in an area of people who spoke his language. When he had been removed from the country, the house, the van, the vampire, and his familiar had all been left behind. He was a fool for thinking Doc would eventually find Susie a new necromancer. Susie had stayed on for too long, she’d forgotten Scorpion and she’d never leave on her own.   
And now there was Gloria. If they didn’t find her necromancer, he’d be forced to say something. Two revenants in one household was bad enough, three was absurd. She couldn’t stay.   
They pulled into the driveway and Doc pulled the garage door open. This was not the luxurious accommodations he’d been accustomed to in life, but he’d learned his lesson. What he had in life he lost in death.   
He rather enjoyed the television, though. Television was nice.  
Susie flounced into the garage, safe and sound, barely before the van was shut off. The door shut behind her, no doubt the damned poltergeist’s work. “You’re late, and dinner is cold.”   
“I have a good excuse, I promise. Also, Pod says hi.”   
He was endeavoring to pull Gloria out of the van himself, but it was going about as well as he expected it to. No matter, he’d gotten Doc’s attention now. He backed away and let her carry Gloria herself.  
“Who is this?” Susie said.  
“Her name is Gloria, and she’s staying with us until we return her to her necromancer,” he said. “She’s…broken.”  
Susie held out her hand. “Hi, Gloria, I’m Susie!”  
Gloria smiled.  
“She can’t talk and she can’t move,” Doc said. The poltergeist opened the door so she could enter unhindered. It was useful for something, he supposed.  
“Oh,” was all Susie said.   
The house was dark and dry, a refreshing change from outside. The various machines hummed quietly. Susie’s latest work, a complicated pen-and-ink drawing with no discernable subject, lay on the dining table.   
“It ain’t much, but it’s home,” Doc said as Gloria looked around.  
It really wasn’t much. A sofa, coffee table, television, and a chair made up the living room. The dining table had two mismatched chairs. Even the bedroom was sparsely furnished. Susie and the vampire didn’t care. Johann preferred his interiors to be a little more ornate, but one could not expect luxury in Purgatory.   
Untold numbers of candles sat, some half burnt, on almost every surface. The little white ones in the tins were inexpensive, and Doc bought them by the bag for Susie’s amusement. Johann didn’t understand the fascination. They had electric lights.   
Susie flung herself onto the couch next to Gloria. “Do you want to watch a movie?”  
Gloria nodded.   
Doc rifled through the movies. “You’re not going to let me watch Jaws, are you?”  
“No. I want to watch Little Shop of Horrors.”  
“So a giant man-eating shark is a no, but a giant man-eating plant is okay?”  
“You said I liked that movie.”  
“You do. It’s got a love story in it.”  
He left them to their bickering and entered the office. The computer resided on a battered metal desk that was as much rust as paint. The library, another inheritance from Scorpion, was collected in a number of bookshelves against a wall. Between the two necromancers, they’d collected nearly every book on revenants and ghouls, and more than a handful on general necromancy and vampires. Ghosts were in short supply. Scorpion hadn’t been interested, and Doc even less so.   
Next to the laptop was a piece of paper. He regarded it as he sat down. Carefully, he carried out the instructions written, some in Doc’s awful penmanship, others in a machine type. Open the laptop. Press enter to see if the laptop is already on. It was. In a few minutes, he had access to the forums.   
Curiosity drove him first to the section dedicated to necromancers looking for revenants. There were no bidding wars, as some claimed, just pages and pages of notes left by necromancers LFR. Some of them were overlong sob stories by those with little material wealth. Others were simple, something he’d imagine Doc putting together. “Female necro LFR, Toronto. Married, no children, no pets, non-smoking. I enjoy gardening and classic movies. Wife likes running, cooking, and travel. No work necessary, just companionship and we’re sick of the ghouls. Plenty of books and movies, library in walking distance. We’re financially comfortable. Toronto is beautiful. PM if interested.”  
Still others were all photos. Photos of personal libraries, houses, mountains, cityscapes, people in tailored suits. One was nothing but pictures of a man wielding paper money. There were promises of allowances or fine clothes or frequent trips to the cinema or Broadway.   
The latter was always tempting. Doc indulged his love for the dramatic arts as often as she could, but such things were expensive. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, finding someone new.  
But he was letting himself get distracted. Doc was young, and if she didn’t get herself killed (likely), he had decades with her yet. One did not simply abandon one’s charge. Not even for the opera. So he dug deeper. A spark of hope filled him when he found a thread filled with complaints about the scarcity of revenants. No luck, though. He went back to the LFR notes.  
“Looking for someone new?”  
He turned to find Cutter watching him, the leech’s head cocked like a dog’s. Its left arm hung limp and pale.   
“I’m trying to find what is happening to them. You don’t kidnap revenants and then hoard them to yourself.”  
“Who is kidnapping revenants?”  
“Someone. We don’t know who.”  
“Well, if you wish to find revenants for sale, you won’t find them there. You need to access the dark web.”  
Johann’s eyes narrowed. “What is the dark web?”  
“There are websites that can only be accessed a…” It paused. “A certain way. Collectively, they are called the dark web. That is where you find the black market sites. If you want to find someone buying or selling revenants, that is where you need to go.”  
"And how do I do that?" He didn't exactly have a piece of paper that said "How to access dark web."  
"Allow me."  
Letting Cutter use the computer was as bad an idea as purchasing a plant that mysteriously appeared during a total eclipse of the sun, but like the idiot protagonist of the musical playing in the other room, Johann didn't feel that he had much of a choice. He let the leech take over.   
It didn't seem to him that Cutter was doing anything different, aside from typing with a single hand. It was very possible that this was another little game. Everything about the leech was a game. How long could it count on the protection of a necromancer before they turned on it?   
Within minutes, they had found multiple listings of revenants for sale. It was hard to look at the photos. Most of them were naked, or wearing the barest scraps of clothing. Some were in poses advertising them for base purposes. Others were advertised as domestic help or for labor.   
None of them were being sold in the US.  
"Maybe they're being smuggled overseas?"  
The leech snorted. "Why? It would be easier to do it all overseas rather than risk exporting corpses or revenants."  
He sighed. "So we have nothing."  
"It appears that way."  
Doc poked her head in from the living room. Somewhere behind her, he could hear the man-eating plant menacing Seymour. "You hungry?"   
Well, Johann wasn't, but she wasn't asking him.   
The leech gave a shallow bow. "Yes, mistress."  
"Let's go, then. I want to stop by Baker's and see if he knows anything."  
"Uh, boss? I don't think taking Cutter out for a snack is what Schroeder meant by "down-low."  
She made an exaggerated shrug. "None of the kids are free tonight. Cutter, put on some normal clothes. No one's going to believe you're human for one second in that jacket. It's still five million degrees out there."  
Cutter didn't reply, simply pointed at his arm.   
"No one's going to notice. Just put an ace bandage on the flappy bit."

 

Baker owned an ugly army surplus store in an tiny strip center north of downtown. Next door was a bicycle shop, and next door to that was one of the godawful apartment complexes that had began to invade Austin. Red, gray, and olive green were only a good color combination if you were colorblind.   
She parked, but no one got out. The shop was closed. She'd once believed she kept "necromancer's hours," but since then she'd realized that most necromancers had normal people jobs and weren't up all night. Obviously, Baker was one of these.  
"Well, fuck," she muttered, digging her phone back out of her pocket. She didn't have Baker's number, but Marge would.   
Johann sighed. "He's in there, boss. Just go bang on the door."  
She was about to retort that none of the lights were on when she heard the soft ding of a door. Baker peered at her from the doorway, an overweight white guy in faded camo pants and a shirt featuring an eagle carrying an AK-47. Below it were the words "Buy American, For Americans!" She wondered if the irony was intentional. Probably not. It was exactly the sort of thing her daddy would've loved.   
"You coming, Johnny?" she said.   
"No, I'll stay here, thanks."  
"Good, you can be the getaway driver."  
"Only if you teach me how to drive again."  
"Never. You're a menace to innocent telephone poles." She got out of the van and Johann locked the door behind her.   
Baker's face brightened when he saw her. "Oh, hey, Doc, I wasn't expecting you."  
"Wasn't expecting you, either. I thought you were closed?"  
"I am. Just catching up on some paperwork. Come on in."  
The shop was full to the brim. She followed him along a deer trail carved through stacks of fatigues and boxes of this and that. The aisles pressed in from either side as they wound their way to the rear of the shop.   
The office was just as cluttered. Stacks of paper sat on the desk, and Baker had to clear off a chair so she could sit. He settled himself into a chair of his own. "What brings you by?"  
She glanced around the office. "You leaving Clara at home, too?"  
He nodded. "What do you mean 'too?' I always have; she bothers the customers. She's happier at home anyway, likes her little projects."  
"Well, Marge has taken to leaving Pod at home since people's familiars have been disappearing. I was wondering if you were doing the same."  
"Yeah, I read about that on the forums. Damn shame, you can't even let a revenant walk the streets anymore. Even APD's new guy lost his, I hear."  
"Well, between that, a dog-golem, and a stray vamp, it's pretty busy in town right now."  
He scratched at his beard. "Haven't heard anything about a dog-golem or a vamp."  
"The dog's dead, but I'm still after the vamp. The new guy is going to kill half my business and the bounty money would be nice."  
"The one in the parking lot is yours, I guess?"  
"Yeah, he's mine. Let's just say I'm not the only one interested in finding strays."  
He nodded. "Always wondered why Austin never seemed to have a vampire problem. Now that you mention it, though, I swear I've felt one around downtown. If I run across it again, I'll give you a shout."  
She stood up. "Thanks, Baker, I appreciate it."  
"Oh, hey," he said, "You got quite a crew there in that van. All of those revs yours?"  
"Two of 'em, yeah. Johann and Susie. Gloria's one of the missing familiars. As soon as I can make some arrangements I'll be handing her back off to her necro."   
"So you found one of the lost ones?"  
"Yeah, she was in a dumpster with another rev. She led us back to an apartment, but no luck figuring out who did it or why. Hell of a thing."  
"Yeah, no shit. Good luck with that bounty."  
"Thanks."

 

"He doesn't know shit," she muttered, hauling herself into the van. "Says he's felt one downtown, but I don't need his help figuring that out."  
The lid of Cutter's daybox strained against the locks. "One what?"   
"Vampire," Johann said. "Schroeder thinks we've got another stray."  
The box rattled. "And when was I going to be told this?"  
"Right now, apparently," she said. "Baker feeling one downtown isn't exactly proof. Could've just been a bad taco."  
"You wouldn't confuse a vampire with a bad taco."  
"I wouldn't, no, but fuck only knows how much experience Baker's had with ya'll."  
The box settled.   
She rolled her shoulders. "Might as well walk to downtown. We're close enough and I don't feel like shelling out five bucks to park."  
"Too bad you won't shell out five bucks to wash the van, either," Johann muttered.  
"It doesn't need to be washed."  
"You're right, the bird droppings do a great job of covering the rust."  
"Go to hell."  
"You first, boss."  
"Anyway," she said, "we'll leave Gloria in the daybox and walk."  
"But what if someone tries to kidnap Gloria?" Susie asked.  
"She'll be locked in the daybox, no one's going to kidnap her."  
Gloria was shaking her head rapidly.  
Johann eyed her from the back seat. "She doesn't want to stay, boss."   
"Fine, fine. We'll drive."

She'd forgotten it was Tuesday. Without the bar and club crowd, she could leave the van in a parking lot that was supposed to be for state employees only but she doubted anyone would care after hours. She dumped Gloria-toting duty on Cutter. It'd give him something constructive to do.  
"You know," she said, shaking her head, "I went to high school with this kid--"  
"For the whole five minutes you were there?"  
"Shut up, Johnny, I was there for two years, dammit. Anyway, this kid, he always used to tell us stories about this girlfriend he had in West Virginia. He'd talk about goin' to see her for spring break, or her comin' down for the summer, but no one ever actually met her. Now I wonder if she even existed."  
"Sometimes I wonder if you ever actually went to school, boss."  
Susie cut in. "That's not nice, Johann."  
She ignored them both. "I wonder if Clara actually exists or if Baker just made her up so he can feel like a real necro."  
Johann laughed. "You know, you might be on to something for once."

 

Austin had a reputation for weirdness, but that didn't mean three revenants and a vampire didn't turn heads. Susie loved the attention. Johann had shut up and was trailing behind, his face slack and stupid. She rolled her eyes and ignored him.   
Downtown wasn't crowded, but it was far from dead. The bicycle rickshaws were nowhere to be found and the food trucks had fucked off for the night, but there were still plenty of people meandering about. It wasn't like they were there for the clubbers and the bar crawlers.   
A girl with blue lipstick and purple hair paused on her way past. "Um, excuse me?"  
Doc raised an eyebrow. The girl had stopped Cutter. His eyes had dilated, though from hunger or the dark she didn't know. This is why she hated taking him out to eat.  
The girl continued at Cutter. "Could I take his picture?" She pointed at Johann.  
Cutter merely turned to Doc. She looked at Johann, who continued to play the stupid zombie car.   
"No, sorry," she said. "The flash messes up his eyes."  
"You can take my picture!" Susie looked like she'd just won chicken shit bingo.   
"Oh, thanks!" She nearly cuddled Susie and took the picture with her smart phone. The damn things were everywhere.   
The girl flounced off with a "Thank you so much!"   
"Thanks, boss," Johann whispered.  
"Don't worry about it."  
The first panhandler they met was a black man with salt-and-pepper hair cut short. "Hey, ya'll have a dollar?" he asked.  
"I got a twenty."  
He eyed her for a moment. "Yeah?"  
She jerked her head toward Cutter. "My friend's lookin' for a drink."  
He backed away quickly. "I don't feed no vampires, man."  
"Hey, no problem. Take care now."

In retrospect, they should've parked on the other side of the damned pink dome. They ran into a few more people either looking for photos or just taking them. He started hiding between her and Cutter as best he could. Susie frightened one person by sheer force of excitement.   
Their next prospect was an old white guy with an impressively long beard and, no shit, a peg-leg. He asked her for change outside a convenience store.   
When she made the offer, he shook his head. "Friend of mine says the guys who feed don't come back, yeah? Sorry, miss, I ain't interested."  
Well, well, well.   
"You know where I can find this other vampire?"  
"No, miss, I only heard it from my friend. I don't know nothing about it."  
"Alright, well, thanks anyway."  
It went on like that until they passed the capitol and nearly ran into Sandy. She'd gained weight since the last time Doc had seen her, although she was still knobby and pale. It was beyond her how someone who lived off and on the streets could avoid getting a tan, but Sandy managed it.   
She beamed when she saw Cutter. "Hey, there!"  
"Hey, Sandy. You're looking better."  
She nodded. "I've been staying with my brother. It's been good."  
"You hear anything about some other vampire looking for food out here?"  
"Yeah, but I said no. No way. Won't trust him. You looking for a bite?"  
Doc raised an eyebrow. "Him? Did you meet the other vampire?"  
"Once, yeah. He was out here by himself. Lucky he didn't eat me anyway. You're looking, right?"  
"Yes, Sandy. Where'd you see the other vampire?"  
She rubbed her arm. "I don't remember. Here? We could sit over there on the steps."  
Cutter practically dumped Gloria onto her and followed Sanding like a puppy on a string. They weren't going to get anything else out of her, so Doc followed, Johann and Susie on her heels.   
He didn't wait for permission. As soon as Sandy sat down Cutter bit into her arm, sucking and lapping at the wound. Doc stood in front of them, casually leaning against the railing, staring past Gloria's head at the church they were no doubt violating the sanctity of. Johann took up a position next to her, facing the street.   
If Sandy felt any pain, she didn't show it. Doc never did when Cutter fed on her, but it could just be a necromancer thing. Maybe Sandy had just enough of the genes to not feel anything, or maybe she just didn't care. At least it saved Doc from having to use a needle and blood bag.   
The wet noises continued for several minutes, only pausing when Johann coughed or kicked at the rail, and picking back up again when the passers-by were gone. Once they stopped for good, Doc set Gloria down, cleaned Sandy's arm, and applied a bandage.   
"Here," she said, passing the woman a juice box, granola bar, and twenty dollars.   
"Ellie, there's a necromancer coming." Susie's voice turned her blood to ice.   
"You know who?"  
"No. They're over there, heading this way."  
It wouldn't be Marge or Baker, then. Could be some other petty necro Susie had forgotten the taste of. She scooped Gloria back up.   
"Gotta run, take care, Sandy."  
She waved. "Bye, ya'll!"  
Johann was on the corner.  
"You got anything, Johnny?"  
"No, boss."  
"Let's get the fuck out of here, then. Maybe they haven't felt ya'll yet." She could hope. Susie was a bloodhound when it came to necromancers, but that didn't mean their presence here wasn't known.   
"You remember the way back to the van, Susie?"  
"No."  
"Alright, well, keep tabs on that necro, don't let them get any closer."  
She nodded. "Okay."

Should've parked closer. Gloria was getting heavy, and the necromancer was gaining.   
"It's Escobar, boss," Johann yelled.   
Fuck. It didn't matter, though, they were at the van. So much for keeping Cutter on the down-low.

Johann couldn't get it out of his head. What had happened to Gloria, and how was it connected to the mummification lab? Who was DE, and why was a revenant trying to kill another revenant? Presumably the other missing familiars were related to all of this, but where were they?   
Around dawn, he found himself back in front of the computer. In the necromantic forums, he found a virtual lost dog sign from Escobar. "Lost Revenant, Austin, TX." It was for Stilts. The notes people had left were mostly condolences and theories and unhelpful suggestions. The more interesting ones were other necromancers with missing familiars. Two were from San Antonio, another was the necromancer from Bourne. Four. Four necromancers missing familiars.   
Strange things were afoot in central Texas.  
The fifth necromancer to post about a missing familiar was Samuel Carson. Gloria had, like Stilts, gone for a nightly walk and never returned. In Carson's photo she had no "CT" tattoo. If her friend had belonged to one of the other necromancers, he couldn't tell.   
Escobar had latched on to his compatriots in misery. There was talk about the meeting Marge had mentioned in San Antonio, of the need for the police to take the matter seriously, a desire to form a more formal coalition of local necromancers. A lot of talk, as far as Johann was concerned. If Escobar was behind this, he was doing a good job of garnering attention to the missing familiars. And why pretend to have his own kidnapped? To allay suspicion? More likely, Doc was simply wrong. Or perhaps he was responsible for the golem, and not for the rest.   
Farther down, a sixth missing revenant, from Port Aransas this time. The necromancer had left home for groceries and had come home to find his familiar gone.   
He read more of the notes, tired already of the commiserations and the promises. No other missing familiars turned up.   
But a new one caught his eye.   
They were claiming to be a kidnapped revenant who escaped. Supposedly they were posting from a library in Austin. The necromancers were trying to identify or locate them, but they were all rebuked. This person wanted no help from necromancers. They wanted help, but they feared other necromancers. They wanted another revenant.   
It was all, as Doc would say, complete and utter bullshit. Gloria had been abducted and maimed, but she had taken to Doc as a drowning man to a log. A revenant wouldn't turn down a necromancer's help.   
He left a note of his own, telling the other necromancers that he would see to it.  
Within minutes, he received a private message, telling him that this "revenant" would meet him at a park on the other side of 35. Noon. He agreed to the arrangement.   
Doc was sleeping, and Cutter had retired for the day. There was no point in informing either of them. The leech would be useless, and if there was a revenant involved they would sense a necromancer and flee. He considered leaving a message with Susie, but she would simply waken Doc and then she'd try to get involved.   
Pellar would be too busy working. Schroeder was an option, but he didn't relish the thought of trying to work with someone who didn't know necromancy. She was a fine witch, but witches couldn't command the dead.   
He would have to do this without backup. At least it was daylight. If he sensed a necromancer he could run or hide. And what threat would another revenant be? If DE had killed one of her own and maimed another, it would have been under vastly different circumstances. This was a public park, not an apartment.   
It was a little more than half an hour before he was to meet the mysterious stranger when he snuck out of the house. Susie was busy in the garage making noise, and he was unlikely to get a better opportunity. He sat on a bench at a bus stop for a while before heading to the park. He wanted to be there after the fake. If this was a trap, he would sense the necromancer first and flee.   
He didn't sense any necromancers as he approached the park. It was of the sporting variety, green field surrounded by fencing and a few tiered benches.   
There was a revenant sitting on one of the benches, watching him.   
He left quite a bit of space between them. "Are you the one looking for help?"  
She nodded. A tattoo marred her forehead, although he couldn't read it from this distance.   
"You can come with me. Doc is trustworthy. We've found another kidnapped revenant and have made arrangements to have her returned to her necromancer. We can help you, too."  
"Interesting," she said. "I should have done a better job of killing her."  
As the words slowly sunk into Johann's head, she reached behind her and took up a long bone. A human femur. He'd seen his own enough times to know what they looked like. Both ends were carved with sigils and smeared with blood. Bits of it were stained yellow with oil.   
He tried to turn and leave, but his body refused. He was being commanded, but there was no necromancer.   
It was a wand. Not the sort of ornate, overdone thing Pellar sold to idiots and tourists, but an actual wand, ugly and very real.   
She hopped off the tiered benches. His body walked forward, and together, nearly hand in hand, they strolled to a black car parked nearby. He felt his hand open the door, felt his body sit on the back seat. His captor took the front seat. In the mirror, the letters "DE" spelled out his fate. She started the vehicle and drove them away.   
His body sat quietly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave me a comment and let me know how you liked it! You can follow me on Tumblr at foxehrobot.tumblr.com for more writing-related stuff.


	4. The Maquiladora

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Johann makes friends, enemies, and attempts to influence people. Emphasis on "attempts."

She tilted her head, watching him in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were old, scratched glass. "You may call me Delaware. Please don't try anything stupid." She set the femur down in her lap.   
Johann had years with Doc to learn all about trying anything stupid. He attacked the door handle, but it didn't open. He launched himself between the divided seats and started to slap at every button and knob he could see. Even if she lost control of the car and they flung themselves off the highway, it was better than continuing to suffer this disgrace.   
Delaware said nothing, just picked up the wand. His body sat back down, politely putting the seat belt on. Damn her.   
She calmly pushed buttons and moved dials until whatever he had done was undone. "Congratulations," she said. "You changed the radio station and freed us from the tyranny of the air conditioning. I hope you're happy."

They were going south. If he was going to be kidnapped, he could at least figure out where they were going.   
Just after they'd crossed Town Lake, she pulled off of 35 and into a gas station. She turned to regard him, setting the wand in her lap again, a hand resting upon it.   
"Let's not repeat what happened earlier. I don't want you to be hurt."  
Normally, that sort of threat wouldn't have bothered him. He didn't feel pain and Doc was more than capable of fixing or replacing anything that became damaged or missing. But she couldn't fix Gloria. He couldn't decide what was worse: losing his tongue or spending the rest of his existence a paraplegic.   
"I'm sure you have questions. Now is your chance to ask them."  
He swallowed his pride before speaking. "Why did you try to kill Gloria?"  
"Gloria? You mean Connecticut?"  
He wanted to stop himself but couldn't. "Connecticut? That's almost as stupid a name as Delaware."  
"Do you like having a tongue? I had thought I'd killed her and Virginia. They were going to betray us to the other necromancers. I couldn't permit it."  
"Betray you? You deserve to be betrayed. You're murderers, and I'm not just talking about Gloria's friend."  
"Sometimes it is necessary to kill for the cause."  
"What cause?"   
She smiled at him, stroking the wand with a hand. "To make all of us revenants free people. To free us from our bondage, to free us to live the lives we wish."  
He blinked. "Let me get this straight. You kidnap me, lock me in a car, and use a magic leg bone to free me from bondage? I could be at home, right now, watching television and doing whatever I want."  
"But you weren't at home watching television, were you? You weren't doing whatever you wanted. You go where she tells you to go. You do what she tells you to do. You go with her, help her, fight for her, die for her. That is not freedom, that is bondage. Real freedom is not an easy thing to accomplish, but we can achieve it."  
He stared into her stupid glass eyes. "I have responsibilities. Everyone does. Someone has to pay for the roof over my head. That costs money, and money takes work. I work. I work so I can have clothes and a roof and my necromancer can eat food that isn't made of cardboard. Anarchy might be total freedom, but I'll pass, thank you. Besides, who's going to feed me if I don't have a necromancer?"  
"You can work for yourself. Have your own home, your own clothes, free of the burden of someone else's decisions. And don't be stupid. There are plenty enough necromancers out there to feed off of. You don't have to bind yourself to one to do it."  
"No, thank you. I don't want to work for myself. I don't want to pay the mortgage or drive the van or worry about finding someone to feed off of. That's Doc's job. My job is to make sure she doesn't kill herself. She's not my owner and I'm not in bondage. Stop twisting everything to suit yourself and tell me what you're really after."  
Her jaw clenched. "I told you. I will make you free."  
"Fine then. What if I don't want to be free?"  
"It's too late for that. You will be free or you will die. And I won't make the mistake I made with Connecticut. Now close your eyes, we are leaving."  
She took up the wand again and his eyes closed. Soon enough, they turned off 35. East, he thought. They'd gone south past Town Lake and turned east. San Antonio was south, but not east. Aside from that, he had no idea what landmarks he could count on. The geography of America was not his strong suit. He likely would've forgotten he lived in Texas if it weren't for the fact that the state's entire living population liked to remind him of it every time he opened his eyes. Knowing where they were and where they were going had also been Doc's job. He could only hope that his miserable attempt at directions would be enough.   
It was a long way east without turns, but when they did begin to turn, one would fall out of his head when he tried to remember another. It was no good. They'd gone south and east, but that was all he could remember.   
The road turned bad, then worse. He could open his eyes again, but when he did, there was nothing to mark his location. It was pastures and trees and cattle.   
Delaware used a small plastic square to open a large gate set in a tall fence. Of course they wouldn't be allowed to simply walk out, even if they knew where to go.   
The driveway, if it could be called that, snaked along for some time. A cluster of buildings awaited them at the end. One was clearly a house. Another was a large metal building without windows. Somehow he doubted they were going to the house.  
She took up the wand again and unlocked the doors. Johann felt himself march to one of the smaller buildings. It was larger than Doc's shed and in better condition. Inside however, it was much the same. Boxes and tools were scattered on shelves and a table sat in the middle. A necromancer's workshop. A bald, brown-skinned revenant with a wooden arm sat on a stool in the corner. Johann eyed him carefully as he laid down on the table. He was one of the missing. Which one of them, he couldn't remember, but he remembered the arm.   
Delaware smirked at him before she turned to the wooden-armed revenant. "We'll make him the new Connecticut."  
Well, that was subtle.  
He got a better look at the other revenant while his forehead was being cleaned. A pale bit of skin was sewn to his forehead with the letters "NY" tattooed on it. Whatever works, he supposed. The arm was intricately carved with birds, waves, and anchors and stained to a near march with his skin. The fingers moved with a delicacy he wouldn't have expected. It was the work of a master craftsman.   
There was, of course, no pain. He hadn't expected any, though it would have been nice. If he was going to be branded he wanted it done properly. At least he didn't have to have someone else's skin grafted on, first.   
Finished, he was led to a small room just in side the large metal building. Most of one wall was cleaning supplies, and another was thread and fabric and sewing supplies.   
Delaware waggled the wand at him. "I'm going to put this down now, but I expect you to be have. We have rules here." She set the femur down and continued. "You will refer to everyone here by their state and nothing else--"  
"'Their state?' What state? I have to remember states now?"  
She stared at him, then slowly pointed to her forehead. "This. It refers to a state. You will refer to everyone by their state."  
"Delaware's a state?"  
"Don't be stupid."  
"I'm not being stupid. I'm not an American, I don't know all these states, how do you expect me to remember these things?"  
"You will learn them. We will not be known by the names that were given to us by others--"  
"I like being called Johann."  
She ignored him. "You are going to unlearn the bad habits you've picked up so that you may remake your life. You will work and together we will all learn to become independent. Any questions?"  
"Yes. When am I free to decide I don't want to be free?"  
Her eyes narrowed. "We will discuss that at a later date."  
Of course. He couldn't be counted on to freely decide to go back to being "in bondage," after all.   
She turned to Wood-arm. "New York, please fetch Ohio and bring him here."  
"Yes, ma'am."   
Ohio wasn't just another one of the missing. He was Stilts. Johann recognized his hooked nose and limp hair immediately. The revenant's long legs and arms fit with the name and made him look somewhat like Pulcinella.  
"Ohio, this is Connecticut. He is also new here and will be aiding you in your work. I expect the two of you will keep the workshop clean."  
Stilts waved with as much enthusiasm as Johann himself could muster.   
"You will be assigned janitorial tasks to begin. We have a large order that needs to be fulfilled by next Tuesday, but after that we may begin to train you on some lesser tasks if you show promise. Do not, under any circumstances, bother the seamsters at their work. If they request something of you, do it. Anything you can do to help them work faster is a priority." She droned on about sweeping and mopping and so on and so forth. Johann was bored after the first minute. Stilts was staring at the ceiling with more interest than it deserved.   
They were then herded into a single large room lit by a few overhead lights, but mostly by smaller lamps clamped to tables or suspended from posts. It was packed with tables, many with sewing machines on them. The buzz of machines filled the air.   
Everyone was a revenant. Most were bald. Everyone had two letters tattooed to their forehead. There must have been two dozen. Off to one side, he saw Wood-arm seat himself at a table and inspect the neckline of a shirt.   
It was a factory. Piles of black shirts were being folded by a tiny revenant with RI on her forehead. Another, KY, missing part of his leg, was putting them into boxes. Mostly, everyone sewed.   
Delaware was beaming. "Impressive, isn't it? We do all the work, from the fabric cutting to the packing and shipping. America wants to expand into screen-printing as well, but for now we have more orders than we can fill just for basic shirts."  
"America? Who's America?"  
"America is in charge of the workshop and handling the clients. This was his idea. Here we can work and be paid for what we produce."  
He bit his tongue so he wouldn't lose it. He doubted they were paid much, if anything. Of course they were busy, who could compete with the slave labor of revenants who never tired, never ate, never bled, never slept?

He decided the single worst thing was emptying the dehumidifiers. At home, that was also Doc's job. Dealing with water was best left to people who regularly enjoyed splashing in it. He didn't believe for a second anyone here would care if he got wet.   
Dehumidifiers emptied, it was time to sweep and mop. Stilts started in the back, Johann in the front. It wasn't long before Wood-arm took the broom from him.   
"Like this, brother. Overlap your strokes and push the dirt into a pile. It is easier if you choose an area to work in then move to another. You can sweep the piles up when you've finished."  
"New York, please continue with your sewing." Delaware stalked toward them from out of her corner. Unlike the others, she did no work. "I'm sure Connecticut has the idea."  
Wood-arm patted him on the back and sat back at his table. Johann continued to bat at the floor, bored. If this was true freedom he wanted none of it. Across the workshop, Stilts was nodding his head to some melody unheard by anyone else. If he was bothered, he didn't show it.   
KY, whatever state that was supposed to be, called out to Delaware. The two began to carry large boxes of shirts out of the shop.   
He completed his second pile of thread bits and moved to Wood-arm's table.   
"How do we get out of here?" he asked.   
Wood-arm didn't look up, just pushed another shirt through the sewing machine, his hands carefully following the neckline. "We don't. Bide, brother. Things change, you know that. This is a new stage in our lives."  
"So we just stay here and make shirts?"  
"Why not? I like sewing."  
Johann stormed off, dragging the stupid broom along behind him. Still bopping along, Stilts had moved on to cleaning up the little piles.   
RI smiled at him when he approached her table. "It's good to see a new face! Welcome to the workshop, I'm Rhode Island!" If she was one of the missing he didn't know. Not all the necromancers had offered photographs.  
"Hi, Rogue Island," he said. "I'm getting out of here."   
Her brow furrowed. "Why? You're from the outside, right?"  
"If by the outside you mean the rest of the world, yes, I'm from the outside. How did you end up here?" He pushed the broom around, sweeping nothing.   
RI was folding shirts with some odd process that involved fancy arm work. It looked harder than folding shirts should have been. "I woke up here, after I died. Delaware said someone brought me back from the dead illegally. America rescued me. I never paid attention to zombies when I was alive, but man, I didn't know what you guys had to put up with out there. Can't work, can't drive, have to live with some necromancer who can make you do whatever they want. Did you escape?"  
Johann stared, the broom frozen in his hands. "I didn't escape, Delaware kidnapped me. I liked my necromancer. I don't want a job and I don't want to drive. I don't want to be here. I want to go home. Besides, if we can't drive then how does Delaware do it?"  
"It's a risk she takes, you know? And have you ever heard of Stockholm syndrome? If it's all you've ever known, of course you liked it. They're giving us a chance to be normal human beings again. Just give it a chance, Connecticut."  
"It's Johann, not Connecticut. Do you know what happened to the old Connecticut? She tried to go back home to her necromancer, whom she liked, and Delaware tried to kill her. She killed another revenant, too. If I go missing, you can bet it's because I'm dead. For good."  
She shook her head. "She must've really done something. They treat us pretty good. When we've got the time, New York trains me on the machines so I can start making a real living soon."  
He sighed. "And what are you going to do with all that money?"  
"I'm going to save up so I can buy my own machine and start working for myself. America's big on independence, training us to become our own bosses. I'll work for myself and be my own person."  
"Your own person? And how do you feed yourself when you're your own person?"  
"Feed us? We don't eat, man, we're not that kind of zombie!" She laughed.  
Silts wandered past, dragging a wheeled bucket behind him. Great, more water. He traded Johann's broom for a mop and sauntered away again. He stared down at the water for a moment before carefully dipping the mop in it. A new problem presented itself. He had no way to wring out the mop without using his hands. He lifted it and watched as the foul fluid dripped from the mop.   
"You put it in the basket and use the lever to squeeze the water out," RI said.   
"Oh."   
She had to show him. He felt like a fool.   
Delaware reappeared. He smeared the mop juice on the floor, remembering to overlap the strokes. She ignored him and continued removing boxes.   
He mopped his way back to RI. "Do you even know what kind of zombie you are?"  
She cocked her head. "I know we're not the kind that eat people. Those are ghouls, right?"  
He groaned. "Ghouls don't eat anything at all. We're revenants. We feed off necromancers. Do they feed us?"  
"No, we don't need to eat. I'm sure if we did, they would have."  
She was too young and stupid to know the basic facts of her own existence. "We don't eat the way the living do. Do living people ever come in here?"  
"Well, America's alive, so yeah."  
Ah-ha.  
"Do you like it when America comes in here? Can you feel him approaching?"  
"Yeah, it's kinda weird, actually."  
"That's because he's a necromancer. If he wasn't, you wouldn't be happy to see him. You wouldn't care. You wouldn't feel him, either. He's always bleeding when he comes in here, isn't he?"  
She suddenly froze in her folding. "How the hell did you know that?"  
He smiled. "Because necromancy is tied to blood. If they're going to feed this many of us, they've got to spend a lot of power. The fastest way to do that is to bleed freely."  
She looked disgusted as she began folding again. "You're really weird, you know that?"  
He shrugged and pushed the wheeled bucket away. "Think about what I said. There are things they aren't telling you. Things you need to know. Ask Wood-arm, he knows."  
"Wood-arm?"  
"NY, whatever that stands for."  
"New York. It stands for New York."  
"I don't really care."  
He mopped away. Stilts had once again claimed the back of the workshop as his own cleaning turf, so he mopped his way back to Wood-arm.   
"She's lying to the new ones," he muttered.   
"They know what they are."  
"No, they don't. They're newly raised. My necromancer and I found where they're being mummified, but they aren't being raised there. Can you try telling them the truth?"  
Wood-arm sighed. "I can, brother, but I do not know if they will listen to me any more than they will listen to you."  
They were silent as Delaware re-entered the shop for more boxes.   
"I need your help. I don't know this place or these people. I know Delaware killed one revenant and tried to kill another. We can't let that happen again."  
"Who did she kill? What were their letters?"  
"The one she killed was marked with "VA," I think. The one she tried to kill was the previous Connecticut."  
He nodded. "I had wondered what happened to those two. I think I saw them once. There are more like that, people who showed up once but went elsewhere."  
"So they must have another apartment somewhere, where they're raising them." Maybe one of the younger ones could describe it to him. He could wait, see if anyone new showed up.   
He continued to mop until Stilts tugged at his arm. He pointed to a door near the supply room, then mimed dumping the buckets. Johann's mood soured further.   
They drug the buckets into a bathroom. It was pristine. He couldn't imagine who would use it. He also couldn't imagine who had decided a bathtub was needed in a workshop, but the living did seem to enjoy their baths a little more than necessary these days. Silts closed the door behind them.   
They worked together to dump the buckets. Slowly. A small amount of water got on the floor, but it wasn't enough to threaten even their shoes.   
Finished, they left the buckets on their sides in the tub. Stilts tugged at Johann's arm again and started making rapid gestures with his hands.   
Johann stared at him. "Are you trying to say something," he whispered.   
Stilts sagged, then nodded. After a long pause, he pointed to Johann and then made the fingers of one hand walk on the palm of the other before pointing away.   
"If you're asking if I want out, the answer is yes."  
That got him a thumbs-up.   
"Do you have any ideas?"  
Stilts nodded, then pointed at his stomach and mimed scissors.   
"If you've got something in there, that'll be easy enough to get out. If we can't get into the workshop there are scissors and thread around we can use."  
Without warning, they were plunged into darkness. From outside the bathroom, they could hear some of the other revenants shrieking. More began to complain.   
Faintly, Wood-arm called out. "Be still, my friends. It will pass."   
Johann rifled through his pockets. He couldn't hear anything from Stilts.   
"We can't work like this," someone said. "We're already behind!"  
He had a lighter, but why bother? No one was going anywhere or doing anything. He moved away from the tub, stretched out near the wall, and listened to the complaints coming from the main room. There was no phone in the building that he had seen. Likely it was in the house. That would be the easiest way out. He had his notebook with him, which meant he had phone numbers for Doc, Pellar, and Schroeder. He didn't know where was, aside from south and east, but maybe if he described the buildings someone would know. Although...  
America wasn't selling revenants, America was selling shirts. Maybe there was an address or a business name on the boxes.   
It wasn't long before some of the revenants, RI among them, were pleading with Wood-arm to do something. Johann rolled his eyes. Hermetics, all of them, or he'd replace his eyes with grapes. The necromancer had done his job perfectly. No matter what they were told, they wouldn't leave any more than Susie would leave Doc. There would be excuse after excuse. He could strangle whoever had invented the revenant spell.   
He flicked the lighter on. Silts had sat down near the sink. They watched each other in the gloom. 

It was a long while before the power was on. Delaware was gone, off to do whatever it was she did when she wasn't overseeing the workshop. That was good. He picked up the broom he was supposed to be sweeping with (that was a task that was never finished), and slipped into the supply room.   
He let himself drift, trying to feel out for the necromancer called America. There was no one. Perfect.   
There were scissors everywhere. He pretended to sweep under a table and slid a pair into his pocket when no one was looking. Thread was just as easy, although it took him a bit to find a loose needle.   
In the supply room, Stilts was moving items from one shelf to another and back.   
"I've got what we need. Delaware's gone, and I can't feel any necromancers around."   
Stilts nodded. The door to the outside was unlocked. It was nearly morning. Had he been here not quite a day? Perhaps. His old existence was far behind him now, a distant, pleasant memory.   
They tried the tattoo shed. No good. A pity, he would have preferred to use a scalpel and proper thread. They found themselves around the corner of the workshop building instead. There shouldn't be a reason for anyone to turn the corner. He hoped this wouldn't take long.   
They were good scissors and cut easily.  
Stilts had quite a lot inside him. Aside from his organs and the various herbs and bits of paper that kept him animate, he had photographs, locks of hair, a coin purse, a...doll? Johann tried not to pay too much attention. It was none of his business.   
It would have helped, though, if Stilts could tell him what he was looking for. It was perhaps round, and no bigger than a fist. That wasn't terribly helpful.   
In the end, it was his stomach they were looking for. Nestled inside amongst cloth pouches filled with salt was a metal tube. He handed it to Stilts.   
Sewing the stomach back up was easy. Sewing the hole in Stilts' side was harder. The skin was almost too thick for the needle, and the thread wasn't quite up to the task.   
"What are you doing, brothers?"  
Johann had one hand pinching the skin shut and another tugging at the thread. He didn't look up. "Sti--our brother has a hole in his side. I'm fixing it for him."  
Wood-arm's wooden eyes were dark holes in a dark face. "Why did you not ask for help? We have thicker needles and proper thread for such work, and we are almost all of us accomplished seamsters."  
He stammered for a moment. "We didn't want to slow any of you down. We're already behind."   
The silence weighed on him like the humidity. Birds sang. He wondered, briefly, how Doc was getting on and what was in the tube.   
Wood-arm's voice was soft. "What are you really doing out here?"  
"I don't know. Stilts has something he says will help us escape."  
"We don't need to escape."  
"We need to escape. We want to go back to our old lives, dammit."  
"Do you?" He bent down, putting his face near Johann's. "Is this how you behave when your necromancers die? Do you whine and cry like a little boy? We serve. I serve, you serve, he serves. Why is this so different?"  
"Because my necromancer's not dead." His voice was a snarl. "You're right. We serve, but this isn't service. This is slavery. Delaware promises a future that will never be, and can never be. They're Hermetics, aren't they? Did you, did anyone tell them that they'll never leave America? That they'll stay here until they rot? They won't even realize it, because it's what they think they want."  
"I could say the same of you, brother. You'll never leave your necromancer. Even now, you fight to remain. How are they so different?"  
That caught him without a retort. He turned back to Stilts, whip-stitched his side shut, and stomped back into the building. 

"Connecticut, could you fetch me more thread, please?"  
Once upon a time, he would have snapped at her. But fetching thread or cloth or more boxes was a task that didn't involve cleaning.   
Stilts was back in the supply room, reordering things for his own reasons.   
"So what was in the tube?"  
Stilts produced the tube and opened it with a flourish. Inside were four square paper sigils. Three were identical. The fourth was only slightly different. Stilts pointed to the three, then pointed again at different directions.   
"I don't understand."  
He pursed his lips, then shoved aside one of the boxes he'd been moving. Behind it, attached to the wall, was a fourth sigil, identical to the three. He pointed again, first at the sigils, then away.   
"You're attaching them to the walls?"  
Stilts nodded, then mimed what Johann thought was a lighter, touching the invisible flame to the last sigil. He set the items down, then brought his arms in front of him, hands closed. His arms swung out and his hands opened.   
"An explosion?"  
Vigorous nodding.  
Well, that was exciting.   
Johann grabbed the requested thread and hurried back out of the supply room. He'd have to trust that Stilts knew what he was doing. He certainly didn't know how they were going to attach any of the other sigils. Maybe to the exterior of the building? If they had to be in the main room, that would be a problem. Stealing a pair of scissors was one thing, but taping sigils to the wall was quite another. The seamters and cutters almost never left their stations. If they could be counted on to remain attentive to their work, they might have a chance, but alas, they chatted and called out one another as they worked.   
Delaware found him bagging shirts to be boxed. "This was not the task you were assigned."  
"I know."  
Her lips became a thin line. "And?"  
"I hate cleaning."  
"I did not ask if you liked the task. I told you to do it. We have a method here, and it is important that you follow it."   
"Becoming free seems to involve a lot of getting ordered around."  
Her eyes narrowed. "We have discussed this already. There are spiderwebs near the lights. Take a broom and a ladder and remove them."  
"What if I don't?"  
"Come with me."   
He didn't. She turned to regard him a moment, then continued on. He went back to bagging shirts. The labels must be put on at some other time, because the boxes were devoid of any useful information. That was a damn shame.   
The room went silent. His hands stopped following his instructions. His legs turned him around and walked toward the front of the room. Delaware stood there, holding the wand. No one else moved. ME was caught mid-sew, his machine running, a knot forming.   
"You have been disobedient, Connecticut."  
His body turned to face the other revenants. They were watching him, each and every one. His arms lifted. One hand grabbed the middle finger of the other and began to bend it back. Slowly, he watched his finger as it was pushed to it's limit and then past. The snap echoed, for a moment drowning out even the incessant humming of the machines.  
"You will take a broom and the ladder and you will remove the spiderwebs from the ceiling, Connecticut. Do you understand?"  
She set the wand down and waited.  
"Yes, Denmark."  
She stiffened. "I am Delaware."  
"Oh, yes, I'm sorry, Delaware."  
"Very good. Get back to work."  
She turned away, and ME began shouting about the knot in his shirt.


	5. The Lucky Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doc has a hangover, Pellar tries to help, and Escobar is suspicious.

She must’ve fallen asleep somehow. Can’t wake up otherwise, although her head felt like it was hosting a war between two rival gangs and her mouth felt like it was hosting a vomit party. The bed was soaked with sweat and the ceiling fan did absolutely nothing to make up for the lack of air conditioning. She stumbled out of her room, tugging a shirt over her head. She was by no means dressed, but it would be polite to at least cover herself.   
Susie was already putting a pot of coffee on, bless her dried-up little heart. Doc pulled a bottle of ibuprofen out of the cabinet and dry-swallowed four. If she was lucky, she wouldn’t throw them back up. Thank fuck the house was dark.  
“He back?”  
Susie shook her head.  
Doc considered her answer for a moment, then staggered back into her room and flopped back onto the bed. A shower would be nice, but showering meant getting out of bed again.   
The door opened. “Are we going to go look for Johann again?”  
Going outside into the light sounded like a terrible idea. So did continuing to drive around the neighborhood. He wasn’t a lost dog, for christ’s sake. But she was out of ideas.  
“Yeah, just give me a bit.”  
“Pellar wanted to talk to you.”  
“Not really feeling like people today, Suze.”  
Something plopped next to her head. She thought the ringing in her head was getting worse, maybe one of the gangs was trying for an audio attack, but it was only her phone. The screen read “Dialing PELLAR.” Goddammit.   
They picked up before she had a chance to hang up. “Is he back?”  
She groaned. “No.”   
“Look, there’s a group getting together today in San Antonio about the missing familiars. I’ll be there to pick you up in fifteen.”  
“Not interested.”  
“Too bad.” They hung up.   
She oozed out of the bed and onto the floor. She’d made it most of the way to the dresser by the time Susie returned with a cup of coffee. The gang war wasn’t going away. A pity she didn’t have any hooch left. She lolled on the floor and drank the rest of the coffee in protest.   
Eventually she managed to drag herself into the bathroom. The floor was cooler in there. The shower was even cooler. She was considering her options for getting back into bed with the least amount of effort when the doorbell rang. Fuck Pellar.   
The door opened a crack.   
“Goddammit,” she hollered. “I’m up, I’m up, let me get dressed.”  
Susie’s voice was like ice. “Good, because I invited Pellar to breakfast.”  
Clothing was difficult to manage on the floor so she heaved herself up using the dresser. She threw on a pair of ragged jean shorts and a tank top. Underthings were for days when she gave a shit. She grabbed her battered Oilers hat, just because it irritated Pellar.   
They were at the table already, sipping coffee out of the nicer Batman mug. No rings today, but five millions bracelets, the wig, and a crop top.  
They raised an eyebrow. “A bra, at least, please.”  
“You’re not wearing one.”  
“I don’t have to.”  
She plopped down in a chair and glared at the witch. The ibuprofen was starting to kick in and the war was de-escalating down to drive-bys and the occasional Molotov cocktail.   
Susie set a plate down in front of each of them. A single egg, perfectly fried, and two pieces of toast with jelly. Doc couldn’t decide if she was more surprised by the existence of the eggs or the four whole pieces of bread. She was starving.   
Pellar was already digging in.  
Doc glanced around the table. “Susie, could I have a fork, please?”  
“Not until you put a bra on.”  
Pellar snickered.  
Her fist almost ended up in the plate. “Goddammit, fine.”  
Back in her own room, she exchanged the shorts for her least-smelly pair of jeans, threw a bra over her head, and put a proper shirt on. The hat stayed. She wasn’t going to put on underwear, and they weren’t going to make her.  
She stomped back into the dining room. “Happy?”  
Susie handed her a fork. “You look very nice, thank you.”  
Doc stabbed the egg and shoveled it into her mouth.   
Pellar made a face as they took another sip of coffee. “That’s pretty.”  
Her mouth was full, so she flipped them the bird. She swallowed and added, “So why are you going to this thing, anyway?”  
“Schroeder invited me in case I could help.”  
“So you’re gonna take advantage of a bunch of poor, grieving necromancers?”  
They stuck their tongue out “Hey, I brought something for you, but if you’re going to be shitty, you can just forget it.”  
“What, do you want me to apologize on my knees? Johann’s not here to die of embarrassment if I do it.” Damn, that hurt more than she thought it would.   
“Please don’t. You don’t roll like that and—“ They pretended to look her up and down though the table. “—you’re not my type, anyway. Here.”  
It was a chocolate bar. A nice one. The kind that cost as much as a drink a the sorts of restaurants she wasn’t allowed into.   
“Don’t eat it all at once.”  
“Damn Pellar, I…thank you.” She stared at her plate.   
"Don't thank me just yet. Guess who came by the store yesterday?"  
Her brow furrowed. "Who?"  
"The new guy."  
"Escobar? What did he want?"  
"Apparently he ran across a trio of revenants and a vampire in downtown the night before. He asked if I knew anyone who had a pet."  
"And...?"  
"I told him about Cutter."  
She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. "Fucking why?"  
"Look, you're my friend, but I'm not going to lie to the cops for you. He asked. I didn't volunteer anything."  
"Christ, Pellar."  
"What? It's not like he's some huge fucking secret. Half of fucking Austin knows. He would've gotten out of somebody." They stood up from the table, grabbed the empty plates, and put them in the sink. "Now are you going to the meeting, or not?"

Pellar drove a tiny silver Toyota. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d expect from them at first. They were often accused, not unexpectedly, of vanity, but even witchery came in second place to Pellar’s desire for financial stability. Tiny silver Toyotas were cheap and didn’t use much gas, perfect for the person who was just named Small Business of the Year by the Austin Black Chamber of Commerce. Pellar didn’t believe in playing games with their money.  
She wasn’t expecting anything to come out of the meeting. No doubt it would be a lot of hand-wringing, a lot of wishing the cops would hurry up, a lot of Someone Should Do Something. She dug around for some money to cover her half of the gas, anyway.   
Susie had arranged with Samuel Carson to hand off Gloria before the meeting. Doc hadn’t had a chance to make her a new tongue, but Samuel said he’d bring her back once she’d gotten the materials.   
Traffic wasn't bad until they hit San Antonio. There was a wreck at the loop that had cars backed up for at least a mile.   
As usual, Susie was worried. "We're going to be late, we should've left earlier."  
"Of course we're going to be late." Pellar gave a dismissive wave. "I run on Gay Witch Standard Time. I'll be late to my own funeral. It should clear up once we're past the loop, and it's not much farther after that."  
Susie liked control. Johann would've ignored it. If it didn't directly involve him, or if he couldn't come up with some snarky remark, he couldn't care less. She missed that.  
They were late. The meeting was at a church, of all places. She wondered if anyone was going to catch fire or if it would just be her.   
A bald Asian guy in a soft blue button-up shirt was waiting outside.  
Susie started waving wildly from the back seat. "I think that's Samuel!"   
It was. Gloria was smiling fit to split her face as he scooped her up out of the car.   
"Thank you." There were tears in his eyes. "Thank you so much. I hope you find Johann soon."  
Goddammit, Susie. She was telling everybody, wasn't she?  
He trotted into the church, unsteady on his feet with Gloria's legs getting everywhere they didn't need to be. It shamed her to think she was happy now that she didn't have to drag her around all the time.   
The meeting was in the church...cafeteria? It wasn't the church-church part of the church, but it had a kitchen, so it didn't feel like a meeting hall. She hadn't been on church grounds since some kid with just enough necromancy raised someone's dead horse. The poor thing had gone running through the streets of Buda before someone had thought to call her in. By the time she'd arrived, a couple people had cornered it between a church and a donut shop. In retrospect, they'd probably expected more than her directing it into a trailer and dropping it dead for good. Maybe sparks or a big stick or black robes. Maybe that was why she had trouble getting work. She needed to be more theatrical.   
This was probably the most necromancers she'd ever seen in one place. Only two others had brought familiars, which made Susie and Gloria the third and fourth revenants in the room. She spotted Pod and her resting bitch face first, Marge and Benjamin sitting by her side. She waved at them, and Susie dashed over to greet her. If her luck held, Susie would spend the whole meeting tittering away instead of becoming even more afraid of her own shadow.   
The other revenant sat next to Baker, a white chick with a ridiculous purple wig covering half her face. So Clara was real, after all.   
And in the corner, Escobar was taking notes while listening to a young black woman with short dreadlocks. Doc tried desperately to recall her name. Her familiar, if she remembered right, was a bronze-skinned woman with cheekbones that could scratch glass. Alia. Her familiar's name was Alia. She couldn't remember the necro's name.   
She didn’t recognize a few of the other necros, although she swore she’d met the father-son duo before. Probably at Pellar’s. She wondered how many of the newbies would get pissy at her for having two revenants. The old guard knew Susie from back when Master Scorpion had been the big fish in central Texas necromancy. They were old school. People who still believed in apprenticeships and inheriting familiars instead of online courses and bidding wars. Old-fashioned, they were, and dying out.   
Collins was there, of course, she gave him a nod, and got a smile and wave in return. If she wasn’t careful, she’d get roped into a two-hour discussion about fuck only knows what.   
She and Pellar took seats at the far end of the cafeteria. Everyone must’ve been waiting on Escobar, because as soon as he and the necromancer from Bourne sat down, the meeting started. The emcee for the day was a stranger, a pale young man with a receding hairline and long black hair, as if he’d taken the mullet to a point so extreme it was no longer a mullet. She sniggered in her chair and Pellar stomped on her foot with a substantial heel.  
Extreme Mullet asked for the lucky seven who were or had been missing familiars to stand up and let everyone know the when, where, and how.   
First up to bat was one of the old guard, a friend of Scorpion’s from Port A, an aging white guy with a beard he could tuck into his belt and tattoos upon tattoos. He brought an enlarged photo of Remy, a stout black revenant with a wooden arm. She didn’t think he’d had a familiar back when she’d first met him, and she was sure she could’ve remembered that arm. His voice cracked as he related the story. He’d gone out to the store for some groceries and left his familiar at home. When he’d returned, Remy was gone.   
“Was the house unlocked when you left?” Escobar asked. Leave it to a cop to ask a stupid question.  
“Of course, I never lock the doors, yeah? Besides, Remy was home. I didn’t even think twice.”  
Someone from San Antonio was next. Their familiar had gone out for some reason and hadn’t come back. He’d reported it to SAPD, but nothing had come of it.   
Jasmine Hall, the young woman from Bourne, was next. Same story, different town. Alia had gone out to do take pictures and disappeared. She started to cry and Extreme Mullet had to help her back to her seat.   
San Antonio the second’s familiar had gone out to get their necro a brownie. From Escobar’s sigh, she wasn’t the only one who’d guessed what kind of brownie it was. She wondered what would happen if a revenant was caught buying pot. Not that Johann would ever do it. Susie might, though.   
Samuel Carson was next. His story was the same one she’d read in the post they’d found after Johann disappeared. Gloria had gone out for a walk at the park and didn’t return home. When he mentioned that Doc had returned her, everyone turned to look. She glared back at them.  
Escobar was next. He handed a large stack of paper to the front row, who passed it along. It was a packet. His business card was stapled to a missing persons flyer, the same photo she’d seen before, now with a written description to accompany it. The next page was a printed map, Escobar’s home marked and highlighter tracing Stilts’ walking route. The third page was an “Approximate Timeline of Events” for the kidnappings and the fourth was a contact list for various police departments.   
“This is very pro,” Pellar muttered.   
She ignored them.   
“I don’t have much to add,” Escobar said. “Monday afternoon, Stilts went for a walk near my home, marked on the map you have in front of you. He was accustomed to returning within an hour to ninety minutes. When he hadn’t returned in two and a half hours, my wife and I went out to find him without success. No one in the neighborhood reported seeing him disappear, although two neighbors did see him on the sidewalk a block away. As of today, I have received no request for ransom, nor have I located any video footage from the area that may have more information.”   
Someone in the back started to speak, but Escobar waved them down. “I know you all want to know if APD or SAPD is planning on investigating. Unfortunately, the Magical Crimes Unit has their hands full with what appears to be a mummification lab discovered in east Austin. Missing Persons is, as I’m sure many of you are aware, concerned only with the living. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any information to share with you at this time. If any of you have any information regarding the apparent kidnappings, the mummification lab, please contact either myself, APD, or your local police department.”  
That drew titters, muttering, and a short boo. Susie gave her a worried look from across the room. She shrugged in reply.  
“Didn’t mention the vamp or the golem,” she whispered to Pellar.   
"Doesn't mean anything." They nudged her with an elbow. “You’re up next.”  
She sighed and walked to the front of the room.  
“As best we can tell, Johann found a post on a forum from someone who said they were an escaped revenant and needed help. He was sup posed to meet them at a park. Never came back.”  
Jasmine stood up. “How’d you find Gloria?”  
She shrugged. “Felt something while I was driving past a convenience store. Schroeder had said Stilts was missing, so Johann and I stopped to check it out. We found her and a dead revenant in a dumpster.”  
The father half of the duo was standing now. “Where was she? What happened to her?”   
“Schroeder interviewed her. I don’t think I’m allowed to hand out that information.” If Escobar wasn’t going to mention a connection, then neither was she.   
“Who’s the other revenant?” Jasmine asked.   
“I turned him over to Schroeder and Escobar.”  
All eyes turned to Escobar and she took the opportunity to bolt back to her seat.   
He stood back up and held out his hands. “The other revenant didn’t match the descriptions of any of the missing revenants. I brought a photo in case any of you would like to confirm.”  
The two San Antonio members of the Lucky Seven went to go look. Across the room, she could see Port A and Collins talking to Samuel. Gloria’s head was leaning against his shoulder.   
Escobar freed himself from the two hopefuls and strode to her and Pellar. “Did your divination turn anything up?”  
Pellar frowned and shook their head. “I don’t know why you thought I could do better than Lexie. I either don’t have enough information, or neither Stilts nor Johann is in the Austin area.”  
Doc raised an eyebrow. “Who’s Lexie?”  
“My wife,” Escobar said.   
Pellar leaned back in their chair, a puzzled look on their face. “Do either of you have a piece of one of them? If I had a physical part, and an actual name, I could get a better divination.”  
Escobar shook his head. “I have nothing of the sort from Stilts.”  
“Actually,” she said. “I still have some of Johann’s skin I had to replace after the dog-golem bit him.”   
“Remind me to get that from you when I drop you off,” they said.   
“If I could have a moment alone, please, Ms. Greene?”  
She eyed Pellar. “Uh, sure, Escobar.”  
They walked outside. The sun beat down like a hammer. Talking to the cops was always a shitty idea. So why the fuck was she doing this?  
“I understand you have a vampire.”   
Oh, boy. “Cutter, yeah, what about him?” It wasn't illegal to have a vampire, just highly, highly dangerous.  
“How do you feed him?”  
“Aside from me, I've got a couple of UT students looking for beer money." May as well fess up. "In a pinch sometimes I take him downtown."  
"Did you take him downtown Tuesday evening?"  
"Yeah. Johann, Gloria, Susie, and I took him downtown."  
He nodded slowly. "Who fed him?"  
She crossed her arms and leaned against the building. It didn't matter what rock he'd crawled out from under, that was confidential.   
He waited for her answer, then shrugged. "Have to say, you don't seem terribly upset about Johann going missing."  
Every organ in her body suddenly stopped. Her brain sluggishly tried to come up with a reply. After a moment, it gave up. "Fuck you, asshole."  
She turned and walked back inside. 

Pellar broke first. "You're being quiet."  
It was like a dam breaking. "Fucker asks me to tell him who fed Cutter the other day and then tells me, to my fucking face, that I don't "seem upset" about Johann."  
In the back seat, Susie made a strangled noise. If it was about the request, the remark, or her repeated swearing, she couldn't tell.   
"Well, he is a police officer, and there's a stray vampire. I imagine he wants to verify Cutter's not out there killing panhandlers."   
"He's also a necromancer and should know better than to ask that sort of bullshit. You don't do it. It's private. People don't want other people to know they're opening a vein for a vampire."  
"I get it, I get it, but--"  
"--but if he wanted to know that bad he could get a goddamn warrant."  
There was an extended silence before Pellar began again. "Baker thinks he's got a location on that vampire, by the way."  
Her head snapped up. "Where?"  
"He gave me an address. Said he doesn't have the exact location because he's got better things to do than roast vampires."  
"Yeah, well, he doesn't have a bigger fish breathing down his neck about it, either."   
Susie's head appeared from between the front seats. "So I finally met Clara, Ellie. She's real."  
"Yeah, I noticed. She's kinda cute."  
Pellar's nose crinkled. "You think she's cute? You sure like 'em trashy."  
"Oh, thanks, you gonna critique my taste in men, too?"  
They sighed. "I wasn't trying to hurt your feelings."  
"Sore subject."  
"I know."

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, critiques, and general reactions are very much appreciated! 
> 
> You can follow me on Tumblr for updates and links to the Google Docs form of this work if you want to leave in-line commentary! https://foxehrobot.tumblr.com/


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